The way Oregon state agencies and local governments handle public records requests varies widely, with some responding quickly and charging low or no fees and others collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees and taking a long time to respond.

Those are the findings of the state’s first survey of how governments respond to public records requests, which Oregon’s Public Records Advocate Ginger McCall released Thursday. The survey asked state and local governments to share information about requests they received in 2018.

McCall said in a press release that the new data can help governments improve how they respond to the requests. She asked governments how many requests they received last year, how many were completed within the 15-day response deadline that state law generally mandates, how many were completed within two months, how much governments collected in fees and whether they granted or denied any requests for fee waivers.

“Previously, there had been an absence of data regarding public records processing in the state,” McCall said.

The survey was sent to 81 state agencies, 10 school districts, 11 special service districts, 11 counties and 20 city governments. They represented a small sampling of Oregon cities and school districts and about half its counties. More than 70 percent responded, according to McCall.

“The relatively high first-time response rate indicates that most public bodies do take their duties under the public records law seriously,” McCall said. “However, we hope to have an even higher response rate in the future.”

State agencies that did not respond at all to McCall’s questions included the Early Learning Division, Teacher Standards and Practices Commission which investigates allegations of educator wrongdoing, Oregon Housing and Community Services, Business Oregon, the Department of Forestry and the Water Resources Department.

Gov. Kate Brown did not issue instructions to agencies to comply with the survey. Department of Administrative Services spokeswoman Liz Craig wrote in an email that her department sent out notices of the survey to state agencies and “agencies weren’t necessarily required to respond.” The governor directly oversees the Department of Administrative Services.

Oregon’s most populous county, Multnomah, did not respond, which Communications Director Julie Sullivan-Springhetti said was because she did not receive notice of the survey. Sullivan-Springhetti said Thursday she was trying to figure out if the survey was sent to someone else in Multnomah government and wrote in an email that the county has “a track record of following the spirit and intent of Oregon's public records law.”

Roughly two dozen state agencies or commissions told the records advocate that they completed responses to all public records requests within the 15 days mandated under state law, as did four cities: Hillsboro, Beaverton, Bend and Oregon City. The most responsive state agencies included the Public Employees Retirement System, Appraiser Certification & Licensure Board, Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, Employment Relations Board and Medical Board.

Eight other state agencies and a couple more cities had nearly perfect response rates within the statutory deadline. Those included the Government Ethics Commission, Oregon State Lottery and Department of Agriculture.

In the Portland area, Portland Public Schools reported it completed 81 percent of public records request responses within the 15 days allowed under state law. Beaverton School District did not say exactly how many public records requests it completed within 15 days, saying only that “most” were handled in that time frame. North Clackamas School District reported that it completed all of the approximately 50 records requests it received last year within 15 days.

The state Department of Human Services had one of the lower 15-day completion rates: 57 percent.

Among the governments that completed the smallest portion of public records requests by the 15-day deadline was the city of Portland with 29 percent, largely because of the slowness of the Portland Police Bureau. The Oregonian/OregonLive reported extensively in 2018 about the police bureau’s high-cost low-speed approach to helping the public access records.

The state’s largest police agency told McCall it completed just 9 percent of public records requests by the 15-day statutory deadline in 2018 and collected nearly $630,000 in fees for its work. Other Portland city bureaus collectively reported an 81 percent completion rate within 15 days.

— Hillary Borrud | hborrud@oregonian.com | 503-294-4034 | @hborrud

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