Prison Legal News v. Office of Open Records
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
No. 997, C.D. 2009
April 8, 2010
When a person asks an agency to waive its fees in responding to a RTKL request, the agency must provide a non-discriminatory reason if its denied the request. If the agency asks a requester to pay the duplication cost up front because the estimated cost of complying with the request is greater than $100, the agency must explain how it estimated the copying costs.
Background
Paul Wright, the editor of Prison Legal News, submitted a Right to Know Law request to the Department of Corrections seeking records relating to claims, settlements, and verdicts against the state in cases involving the department. Wright requested that the department waive the duplication fee because the documents were to be used in the public interest.
The department granted the request, but informed Wright that he would need to pay it $8,750 to process the request, which the department estimated to contain 35,000 pages. The department declined to waive the fee.
Wright appealed to the Office of Open Records, which ruled that the 35,000-page estimate was reasonable, that the department may reject a request for a fee waiver, and that the department must disclose the records if the fee was paid.
Commonwealth Court Decision
Under the RTKL, an agency can require a duplication fee to be prepaid when the fee is estimated to be over $100. But, the agency must explain how it determined the estimated fee. Here, according to the court, the department did not explain how it developed its estimate that the request would generate 35,000 pages and therefore did not properly justify its fee estimate.
The department also did not explain why it denied Wright’s request to waive the fee. The RTKL gives agencies the discretion to deny requests to waive copying fees. But, as the court held, an agency must explain why the request is denied and the denial cannot be discriminatory. The court instructed that in this case the dDepartment should be given another opportunity to explain why it denied the waiver and how it estimated the cost of complying with the request.
The court also held that when an agency’s denial of a RTKL request is appealed to the OOR, the requester does not have a right to a hearing. The OOR has discretion about whether to hold a hearing.