Ronald Alexander v. Framingham, City of (SPR 20200058)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Public Records Division Rebecca S. Murray S11pe111isor of Records January 28, 2020 SPR20/0058 Todd C. Palmer Super Records Access Officer City of Framingham Memorial Building 150 Concord Street Framingham, MA O1 702 Dear Mr. Palmer: I have received the petition of Ronald Alexander appealing the response of the City of Framingham (City) to a request for public records. G. L. c. 66, § lOA; see also 950 C.M.R. 32.08(1). Specifically, on November 6, 2019, Mr. Alexander requested: "to inspect the contents of all Google Drives, Team Drives, Shared Drives, Cloud Folders, DropBox folders, etc. used by any [D]epartment, [C]ommittee, [C]ommittee member, or Employee of the City currently or in the past." In its initial response on November 6, 2019, the City informed Mr. Alexander, "[y]our request as it stands is vague and realistically could involve thousands of documents and hundreds of hours of staff time since most of the departments use shared drives in one form and or another to save their files." The City asked Mr. Alexander to narrow his request to something more specific, and forwarded the request to its Legal Counsel, Christopher L. Brown of Petrini & Associates, P. C for a further response. In his petition, Mr. Alexander contends "[t]here is nothing vague about my request I am requesting to inspect the contents of all of their 'cloud' drives, nothing more, nothing less. If these records were stored in traditional filing cabinets, then I would simply request to inspect the contents of those filing cabinets. There would be nothing vague about that request." Please be aware that the request must reasonably describe the records sought. G. L. c. 66, § 1O (a)(i). In a recent case, the Superior court found that under the Public Records Law "[t]he reasonable description requirement contemplates that a requesting party will identify documents or categories of documents with sufficient particularity that government employees will be able to understand exactly what they are looking for, and then make a prompt production." See Jaideep Chawla v. Dep't of Revenue, Suffolk. Sup. No. l 784CV02087, at 2 (January 23, 2019). 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

Todd C. Palmer SPR20/0058 Page 2 January 28, 2020 The court fmiher indicated "[r]equests for documents that are articulated with very broad language that calls upon non-lawyer administrative personnel to interpret the scope of what is sought, and then make fine judgments about what documents are and are not sufficiently 'related' to the category of materials requested, will not satisfy this statutory standard." (e mphasis in original). Accordingly, I find it is unclear which specific records Mr. Alexander seeks. Mr. Alexander may wish to modify and/or clarify his request in order to reasonably describe the requested records. Sincerely, Rebecca S. Murray Supervisor of Records cc: Ronald Alexander Christopher L. Brown, Esq., Petrini & Associates, P.C.