June Editorial Winner

Unreasonable, Wide-Ranging Open Records Requests Cost Taxpayers

By Mike W. Ray, Southwest Ledger

Oklahoma’s Open Records Act was created in 1985 for a noble purpose: “[T]o ensure and facilitate the public's right of access to and review of government records so they may efficiently and intelligently exercise their inherent political power…”

The statute decrees that “it is the public policy of the State of Oklahoma that the people are vested with the inherent right to know and be fully informed about their government.

Transparency is the new buzz-word in government. “Let the sunlight in.” Let the public see records of government proceedings, projects and programs that ultimately affect them.

But the statute also includes an exception “where specific state or federal statutes create a confidential privilege…”

We live in an age when privacy is at risk of extinction. Utility poles and mobile telephones have cameras that record our movements everywhere every day. And the internet enables virtually anything to be posted for public consumption and titillation.

This state’s Open Records Act was intended to enable citizens to gain access to documents of genuine public concern that are being withheld solely because of embarrassment, animus, or unwarranted secrecy.

But a recent case in Lawton provides a classic example of transparency run amok.

An “investigative reporter” sub-mitted an ‘open records’ request for “all email exchanges sent to and from Lawton Mayor Stan Booker’s email between the dates of January 1, 2024, to February 24, 2025.” There was no qualifier in that application to specify what the reporter was seeking. And the City Council was informed that had the request been fulfilled in its entirety, it could have cost local residents – not the reporter nor his employer – an estimated $67,000.

That’s because the Open Records Act decrees, “In no case shall a search fee be charged when the release of records is in the public interest, including, but not limited to, release to the news media…”

When the statute was drafted 40 years ago, Oklahoma law-makers never imagined that it would be used to rummage carte blanche through a public official’s mailbox, closet, attic, and garage in search of who-knows-what.

If the news media will not voluntarily police itself and limit excess such as what was demonstrated in Lawton, the Legislature probably will impose compulsory restrictions. After all, Oklahoma lawmakers have already exempted themselves from the Open Records Act.