I have to be the Lorax here and speak for the towns. Many municipalities have all employees working from home. Even if that is not an overall policy, the law provides that employees who have school-aged children or have been in contact with someone who has the virus, etc. can stay home. If the records that are requested are easily accessed via computer it should be no problem to provide them in a timely fashion. If someone is asking for an older record or for a document which is otherwise not accessible, it is not unreasonable to take additional time to provide same.
Always need a Lorax! It's definitely not unreasonable to have to wait a little longer to get a copy of some hundred year old document stored in a basement somewhere during an emergency but some of the language quoted in the article seems unnecessarily broad. Why not make the distinction between the retrieval of hard-copy archived documents versus digital ones instead of just not responding to requests or only requiring a "reasonable effort" to do so? My guess would be simply because they don't have to but it would be nice.
I get that it's much harder to fulfill these requests right now but shutting them down altogether feels like a really undemocratic move. In-ter-est-ing
A democracy without access to information is no longer a democracy.
A San Diego county spokesperson told the Voice of San Diego recently that “the public interest in receiving records at this time is outweighed by public interest in having county personnel free to handle this ongoing emergency.”
This is scary stuff. It's especially concerning that requests for information relating to the emergency itself are being denied. These crisis situations should highlight the need for streamlined self-serve access instead of an excuse to not provide the public with access to important information.
I have to be the Lorax here and speak for the towns. Many municipalities have all employees working from home. Even if that is not an overall policy, the law provides that employees who have school-aged children or have been in contact with someone who has the virus, etc. can stay home. If the records that are requested are easily accessed via computer it should be no problem to provide them in a timely fashion. If someone is asking for an older record or for a document which is otherwise not accessible, it is not unreasonable to take additional time to provide same.
Always need a Lorax! It's definitely not unreasonable to have to wait a little longer to get a copy of some hundred year old document stored in a basement somewhere during an emergency but some of the language quoted in the article seems unnecessarily broad. Why not make the distinction between the retrieval of hard-copy archived documents versus digital ones instead of just not responding to requests or only requiring a "reasonable effort" to do so? My guess would be simply because they don't have to but it would be nice.
I get that it's much harder to fulfill these requests right now but shutting them down altogether feels like a really undemocratic move. In-ter-est-ing
A democracy without access to information is no longer a democracy.
Sounds like some BS right there
This is scary stuff. It's especially concerning that requests for information relating to the emergency itself are being denied. These crisis situations should highlight the need for streamlined self-serve access instead of an excuse to not provide the public with access to important information.