Guest View-John Musolf: "More Transparency Lost"

Two weeks ago , Oro Valley resident John Musolf wrote of Oro Valley Town Clerk Julie Bowers published support of an Arizona House Bill. The bill would add a charge for the time it took to get certain information requests.  John opined that imposing such a fee would reduce the ability of some individuals to seek public records.  In today's guest view, John discusses a change in the manner in which the town provides one of his information requests.  He concludes that, because it puts the burden of data sorting on him, it is a reduction in transparency.
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One of my contributions to the LOVE blog is to research Oro Valley public activities.

For example, on September 23, 2013, I filed a Request for Records with the Oro Valley town clerk's office for a copy of each Request for Records filed with the Town of Oro Valley Clerk on a weekly basis.  That request was fulfilled when the clerk's office contacted me each week to review those weekly public requests and have copies made if I desired them.   My request was a rather simple one. It was fulfilled easily.

On March 5, 2014, Oro Valley town clerk office employee Michelle Stine told me that I should get this report myself:

“PLEASE NOTE: The requested information in now available on the Town's website under "Fiscal Year Request" at the following link. 

http://www.orovalleyaz.gov/town/departments/town-clerk/submit-public-records-request 

Since your requested information is now available online, we will no longer fulfill this ongoing request. Thank you”.  (Source: email from M. Stine) 

I followed her instructions.  Getting the information I had requested, a copy of all information requests filed that week, was once a simple task. Now, it had become a nightmare!

The link she gave me took me to a new screen which has four tabs.

I clicked on the “Fiscal Year Request Tab”. Viola!   On screen was a list by requestor of the number of requests made year-to-date and the "time" the town took to fulfill the requests.  It was not a copy of each request for a specific week, as I had requested.  In fact, there is no way to get that information without ferreting through each request for the year and then manually identifying which ones were requested for that week.

To manually assemble a weekly report,  I would have to click on all 40 names at the end of each week. After clicking on each name I would have to scroll thru the list of public requests to find the current date a request was received for each name. Frankly, doing this is literally impossible.

In effect, the Oro Valley clerk's office has added a significant barrier to giving me information they could provide me easily.

I know that the The Town Clerk uses a computer program to retrieve Public Records Requests by weekly date.  I know because they have used it to provide this information to me.  Here's the report for 1-10-14.  They have not made this search functionality available to the public.

This is "more transparency lost."
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