{"id":2190,"date":"2011-04-14T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/five-hours-of-staff-time-to-copy-agendas-and-minutes.html"},"modified":"2011-04-14T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-14T12:00:00","slug":"five-hours-of-staff-time-to-copy-agendas-and-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/04\/five-hours-of-staff-time-to-copy-agendas-and-minutes.html","title":{"rendered":"Five hours of staff time to copy agendas and minutes?"},"content":{"rendered":"Why does it take someone paid $24.23 an hour to convert agendas and minutes\nto PDF?\n

\nValdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority, VLCIA, Open Records Request,\nBobbi Anne Hancock asked Allan Ricketts why\n\na bunch of agendas and minutes should cost $125.09?<\/a>\nShe received back this itemized invoice:\n

\n
\n \n

\nApparently the lowest paid VLCIA employee who can convert documents to PDF is\npaid $24.23 an hour.\nAccording to\n\nGeorgia Code 50-18-71:<\/a>\n\n\n

\n(d) In addition, a reasonable charge may be collected for search,\nretrieval, and other direct administrative costs for complying with a\nrequest under this Code section. The hourly charge shall not exceed the\nsalary of the lowest paid full-time employee who, in the discretion of\nthe custodian of the records, has the necessary skill and training to\nperform the request; provided, however, that no charge shall be made\nfor the first quarter hour.\n<\/blockquote>\nOr maybe they didn’t know where their minutes were and had to search for them.\n

\nLet’s look at \n50-18-71.2<\/a>:\n

\nAny agency receiving a request for public records shall be required\nto notify the party making the request of the estimated cost of the\ncopying, search, retrieval, and other administrative fees authorized by\nCode Section 50-18-71 as a condition of compliance with the provisions\nof this article prior to fulfilling the request as a condition for\nassessment of any fee; provided, however, that no new fees other than\nthose directly attributable to providing access shall be assessed where\nrecords are made available by electronic means.\n<\/blockquote>\nIs converting to PDF directly attributable to providing access?\n

\nAnd then there’s this:\n

\n(e) An agency shall utilize the most economical means available for\nproviding copies of public records.\n<\/blockquote>\nUm, wouldn’t that be email?\nOr why didn’t they just convert all the agendas and minutes and stick them\nup on their website so anybody else who wanted to see them could?\n

\nMaybe that’s too hard for an organization that\n\ntook six weeks<\/a> to put its own videos of its own “Forum” up on its website.\nThe “Forum” with a panel of nothing but paid “experts”\non which the Industrial Authority spent more than\n$17,000<\/a>.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why does it take someone paid $24.23 an hour to convert agendas and minutes to PDF? Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority, VLCIA, Open Records Request, Bobbi Anne Hancock asked Allan Ricketts why a bunch of agendas and minutes should cost $125.09? She received back this itemized invoice:   Apparently the lowest paid VLCIA employee who can […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,48,40,2,20,178],"tags":[231,193,8738,3661,382,3434,4720,232,4431,180,8749],"class_list":["post-2190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-code-enforcement","category-community","category-government","category-law","category-vlcia","tag-agendas","tag-allan-ricketts","tag-biomass","tag-bobbi-anne-hancock","tag-expenses","tag-forum","tag-georgia-open-records-act","tag-minutes","tag-open-records-request","tag-valdosta-lowndes-county-industrial-authority","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-zk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}