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Sunday, May 02, 2010

Ind. Gov't. - PAC opinion on access to certain IDEM records

For several years the ILB wrote of concerns about potentially "secret dockets" in Indiana -- appeals which were not listed on the Clerk's docket so that there was no way for the public to know they existed. This ILB entry from Oct. 8, 2008 reports on the resolution -- cases with confidential filings are recorded on the docket just as other cases, but with notations indicating documents that are confidential.

An April 26, 2010 advisory opinion (10-FC-78) issued by the Indiana Public Access Counselor re "Alleged Violation of the Access to Public Records Act by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management" addresses a related issue. IDEM has been imaging all its documents and making them available via a "virtual filing cabinet," From the opinion:

According to your complaint, you allege that on March 8, 2010, you requested a document listed under “Deerfield Storage Facility” in IDEM’s virtual file cabinet (“VFC”), an online database where members of the public can access public documents. Documents in VFC are assigned one of two designations: (1) “view,” which provides immediate access to the record; and (2) “request,” which directs users to a web page where they can make a written request for the record. * * *

Finally, the APRA does not prohibit IDEM from publicly listing records in a VFC or similar database even if some of those records are confidential. As Ms. Endris notes, the VFC merely lists the existence of various records; it does not make them all immediately available for public inspection. Moreover, nothing in the APRA prohibits an agency from denying access to a confidential record that is listed on a public database. In other words, an agency’s public acknowledgment of the existence of a record is distinguishable from an agency’s disclosure of the record, and nothing in the APRA requires that an agency must produce records merely because the agency has acknowledged their existence.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 2, 2010 05:15 PM
Posted to Indiana Government