A watchdog organization that promotes transparency in government has once again issued a scathing review of the state Office of Information Practices, alleging the backlog of complaints in the office increased last year despite the fact that OIP has more staff per capita than its peer agencies in other states.
The report by the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest is the second in two years that takes the agency to task for providing slow service to the public. OIP is the state agency tasked with resolving disputes over public access to government records in Hawaii.
Last year the law center alleged OIP had adopted procedures that effectively help government agencies keep public records out of the view of the public, and “improperly” encouraged government agencies to withhold records on privacy grounds. The 2017 report also found OIP on average takes four times as long to resolve complaints as it did 15 years ago.
In its latest report Opens in a new tab the law center found that all but three of the 46 OIP decisions that were released from 2015 to 2017 took two years or more for the agency to produce.
“Two years minimum is too long for a member of the public to wait for OIP to resolve a complaint,” according to the law center report. The report added that “Hawaii deserves the expeditious forum for addressing public access disputes that the Legislature intended” when it created the agency 30 years ago.
The state comparisons found that the longest time to a decision was 1,365 days for OIP, and “no state took longer than OIP to resolve public disputes.” The law center report concluded Hawaii could benefit by adopting a new law that sets a six-month deadline for OIP to review and resolve disputes.
Lawmakers last week considered Senate Bill 3092 Opens in a new tab, which would impose such a six-month time limit. That bill won tentative approval from the Senate Government Operations Committee and is now pending in the Senate.
OIP on Monday released
a response Opens in a new tab that said both the 2017 and the 2018 law center reports criticizing its performance were “based on flawed methodology, inaccurate assumptions,
its writer’s particular perspective as an advocate and legal adviser for a
media outlet, and a lack of understanding of how
and why OIP has actually conducted its business over time.”
The OIP response contends that the “opinions” from other states “are usually only one to two pages long and do not contain the detailed factual and legal analyses provided in OIP’s formal and memorandum opinions.”
OIP drafts detailed opinions because its findings carry weight in court and because the agency wants its opinions “to speak for themselves” so that OIP does not need to become entangled in prolonged court fights over its decisions, the agency said in its written reply.
The agency also argued that most public inquiries are resolved by OIP through quick, informal opinions through its “attorney of the day” program, in which office lawyers field phone calls or other inquiries from the public about public records and other disputes.
Those inquiries make up 77 percent of the inquiries to OIP, and the outcome of the latest study would have been quite different had the law center taken that work into account, OIP said.
OIP also alleged that the law center’s “motives are suspect,” noting that both reports disregarded the value of its “attorney of the day” program.
“Without OIP to provide this service, would there be more clients for a ‘public interest’ law firm to choose from?” asked the OIP response.
