Kansas town broke law by charging $3,500 for public records, attorney general says
The city of Frontenac, Kansas, violated the Kansas Open Records Act when it requested a $3,500 fee to provide public documents to a news reporter, the Kansas Attorney General said Monday.
Attorney General Derek Schmidt notified city officials of the violation, saying the fee was unreasonable and the city failed to justify or explain why it was seeking $225 per hour for time spent by an outside legal counsel to fill the request, according to a news release.
“While the city may recover its actual costs in responding to a KORA request, those costs must still be reasonable,” the attorney general’s office wrote in a finding of violation.
“An hourly rate of $225.00 per hour for attorney time is per se unreasonable. Outside counsel may charge a governmental entity for its services. However, based on the public policy and purpose of the KORA, it is unreasonable for a public agency to pass those costs onto a requester without a significant reduction in the hourly fee rate.”
The violation stemmed from a September 18, 2019 public records request by a news reporter gathering information about the city council’s firing of the city clerk, city attorney and city administrator. Frontenac, with a population of about 3,400 in the 2010 census, is about 120 miles south of Kansas City.
At least two media organizations, including the Morning Sun newspaper in nearby Pittsburg, filed formal requests for written and electronic communications between the city officials involved in the firings.
First, the city said it had no city attorney — he had been fired — and could not produce the records. Then the city said it required $3,500 from each of the two media organizations to find and copy the records.
A representative of a media organization filed a complaint in October.
As a result, the attorney general imposed several requirements on the city of Frontenac:
- Cease and desist from any further violation of the KORA.
- Review and amend its city ordinance outlining fees for access to public records to ensure compliance with the KORA.
- Adopt, review, or update any internal city policies governing how staff is to respond to KORA requests, including the calculation of costs necessary to do so.
- Establish and maintain a checklist for city staff to use and consider when calculating actual costs necessary to respond to a KORA request.
- Identify at least one and a half hours of training on the KORA for any interim or permanently appointed city attorney, city administrator, city clerk, city records custodian or others required to respond to or process records requests, and each member of the city council to attend.
- Provide the attorney general with a written report of compliance within 60 days of the finding of violation.
