North Myrtle Beach to Charge Taxpayers for Public Records

Bryan Cox
July 14, 2009

The North Myrtle Beach City Council adopted a new policy July 6 imposing fees on citizen requests for public records. The change comes despite the city already employing a full-time public information director whose job includes answering these inquiries. Taxpayers must now effectively pay twice to obtain copies of city records they have an absolute right to review.

According to the city's new policy, citizens must pay 25 cents per page for copies, 35 cents per page for color copies and a dollar per page for oversized documents that exceed 10 pages. Citizens are also subject to a $25 charge per hour for any request that takes more than 15 minutes to fulfill. The city manager has authority to waive these fees at his discretion.

City Manager John Smithson said the

"That request alone would take several people several days," said Smithson. However, he conceded most information requests do not require that much time.

The city's stated goal of discouraging requests is troubling as it appears to challenge one of the fundamental principles of representative government. In a free society public servants work for the people, and citizens have an absolute right to examine public documents. It is inappropriate for government to create roadblocks to access, especially when the admitted reason for doing so is solely to minimize the burden to government.

The argument that imposing fees will discourage frivolous requests also misses a fundamental point -- there is no such thing as a frivolous request for public information. Public servants exist for the sole purpose of serving the citizenry, and citizens have an absolute right to decide for themselves what public records are important. The only function the government serves in this process is to make the information available, and any burden associated with this should rightfully fall on the public employee as one of their core responsibilities.

That said, multiple municipalities across the state are currently demonstrating that making public information available is easily achieved while actually reducing the workload for government officials. Anderson and Charleston counties, as well as the cities of Aiken, Cayce, Irmo, Myrtle Beach and Turbeville have all placed government records online during the past year.

Making information freely available online serves the public while eliminating the need for government employees to process multiple requests for the same information. This generates significant time savings for them while greatly improving transparency. Anderson County Council Chairman Eddie Moore said his county employees have noticed a signficant drop in calls since Anderson became the state's first county to place its records online this spring. He credits online transparency with freeing up time for county employees to complete other tasks.

"We just exported the reports we are already keeping and posted it to the county website. Putting it online didn't cost a dime," said Moore.

Greenville County Councilman Willis Meadows said some of his fellow council members worry online transparency would create a burden for county employees, but that after speaking with officials in municipalities that have transparency websites already in place he is convinced it would actually save time and money.

"It costs our citizens to get this (information), but it also costs the county a good bit of money to research this. If we had some of this online then the county personnel could be doing other things while you as a citizen could look these things up," said Meadows.

In June, Charleston County unveiled a new transparency section on its website after a strong push by Councilman Joe McKeown. City Council members in Greer announced the first week of July they are pushing to create a local transparency website as well. Greer's announcement came two weeks after council members from Fountain Inn, Mauldin and Simpsonville publicly announced their support for placing all government records online.

Since 2006, 14 states and five of the nation’s 40 largest school districts have created transparency websites at no cost to the taxpayer. At the state level, Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom already operates a transparency website for 85 state agencies and has repeatedly offered his assistance to provide any local government interested in implementing transparency with the tools to do so.

Nothing in the foregoing should be construed as an attempt to aid or hinder passage of any legislation. Copyright 2009. South Carolina Policy Council Education Foundation, 1323 Pendleton Street, Columbia, South Carolina 29201.