Ronald Alexander v. Natick, Town of - Public Schools (SPR 20180733)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Public Records Division Rebecca S. Murray Supervisor ofR ecords May 25, 2018 SPR18/733 Timothy Luff Assistant Superintendent Office of Student Services Natick Public Schools 13 East Central Street Natick, MA 01760 Dear Mr. Luff: I have received your petition on behalf of the Natick Public Schools (School) seeking to charge a fee in excess of $25 an hour. G. L. c. 66, § 10( d)(iv). As required bylaw, the School furnished a copy of this petition to the requestor. G. L. c. 66, § 10(d)(iv)(2). Ron Alexander requested "all all emails sent/or received by Timothy Luff, Anna Nolin, and/or School Committee, February through April received on April 25, 2018." Petitions for ability to assess fees Municipalities may not assess a fee for the first two hours of employee time to search for, compile, segregate, redact or reproduce the record or records requested unless the municipality has 20,000 people or less. G. L. c. 66, § lO(d)(iii). Where appropriate, municipalities may include as part of the fee an hourly rate equal to or less than the hourly rate attributed to the lowest paid employee who has the necessary skill required to search for, compile, segregate, redact or reproduce a record requested, but the fee shall not be more than $25 per hour. Id. A fee shall not be assessed for time spent segregating or redacting records unless such segregation or redaction is required by law or approved by the Supervisor of Records (Supervisor) under a petition under G. L. c. 66, § 10(d )(iv). See G. L. c. 66, § 10( d)(iii); 950 C.M.R. 32.06(4). The Supervisor may approve a petition from a municipality to charge for time spent segregating or redacting or to charge in excess of $25 per hour, if the Supervisor determines that 1) the request is for a commercial purpose or 2) the fee represents an actual and good faith representation by the municipality to comply with the request, the fee is necessary such that the request could not have been prudently completed without the redaction, segregation or fee in One Ashburton Place, Room 1719, Boston, Massachusetts 02108 • (617) 727-2832• Fax: (617) 727-5914 sec.state.ma.us/pre• pre@sec.state.ma.us

Timothy Luff SPR18/733 Page2 May 25, 2018 excess of $25 per hour, and the amount of the fee is reasonable and the fee is not designed to limit, deter or prevent access to requested public records. G. L. c. 66, § IO(d)(iv). In rendering such a decision, the Supervisor is required to consider the following: a) the public interest served by limiting the cost of public access to the records; b) the financial ability of the requestor to pay the additional or increased fees; and c) any other relevant extenuating circumstances. Id. The School's Petition In its petition the School is requesting to charge a "rate of $30 per hour give[n ] the highly confidential student information that may be encountered." The School indicates there are "more than 2578 emails that may be responsive to this request." The School has given an estimate to Mr. Alexander "based upon my completion of your previous request for all January and March School Committee emails (which took me 3 days personally), this will take an estimated minimum of 24 hours to complete by one of our secretarial staff." Therefore, they are "requesting that the Supervisor of Records allow us to charge you for 22 hours of time to complete this process at a rate of $30 per hour give the highly confidential student information that may be encountered." The School in a supplemental response in support of their petition on May 23, 2018 also indicates the "[c ]orrespondence among School District Administration and School Committee members often contain personal and confidential information regarding students and/or personnel. In order to complete this search and to identify what, if any, emails fall within privacy exemptions, this search can only be completed by a high level district administrator such as myself." The School provides that "[t]he rate requested is based upon the current rate of my Administrative Assistant who may assist me in the segregation and redaction of these documents" and "[i]n the interest of keeping the cost down for this review, I chose to use my Administrative Asst. rate, even though I will be primarily performing the search, segregation, and redaction of necessary documents." The School indicates the rate of the "high level district administrator" performing the work is "$67 per hour." I find the School has met its burden to explain how, given the nature of the responsive records, the request could not prudently be completed without redaction, segregation or by assessing a fee in excess of $25.00 per hour. See G. L. c. 66, § lO(d)(iv). However, the School has not met its burden to charge for 22 hours of search time at the rate of $30.00 an hour. G. L. c. 66, § 10(d )(iii). The School needs to clarify in its subsequent fee estimate how much time will be spent on searching, segregating, and redacting. Conclusion As discussed above, I will allow the School to charge for segregation fees in excess of $25 per hour for the provision of the requested records. However, this approval is limited to the rate of $30.00 per hour and only for segregation and redaction costs. The School must provide

Timothy Luff SPR18/733 Page 3 May 25, 2018 the records in compliance with this determination, the Public Records Law, and its Access Regulations. Please note, the requestor has the right to seek judicial review of this decision by commencing a civil action in the appropriate superior court. See G. L. c. 66, § 10(d )(iv)( 4 ), lOA(c). Sincerely, ~~ Supervisor of Records cc: Ronald Alexander