The Times and Democrat: South Carolina: Sunday, June 10, 2012.
Once South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act was considered a model for other states. That was after its update more than two decades ago. As much as commitment by public officials to adhere to the law would solve many of the problems surrounding public access to public information, meetings, documents, etc., the law is in need of strengthening in 2012.
It won’t happen, though it appeared the concluding legislative session was the best chance in recent times to make sensible reforms in FOIA. Changes passed the House of Representatives but died in the Senate, meaning the process of securing reforms will have to begin anew in 2013.
Reforming FOIA has picked up momentum in recent times with lawmakers themselves experiencing difficulty in getting information from government. FOIA is not just an issue for the press, they have found.
The House-passed bill made improvements such as:
· Shortening from 15 business days to 15 calendar days the deadline for responding to an FOIA request.
· Prohibiting state and local entities from charging fees for staff time spent complying with FOIA requests.
· Allowing state and local entities to charge only prevailing commercial rates for copying records.
Orangeburg Democratic Sen. Brad Hutto will get some of the blame for the measure’s demise. After House passage, the bill with the guidance of Senate Judiciary Chairman Larry Martin, R-Pickens, was headed for floor debate in the upper chamber and likely attachment of amendments when Hutto put an objection on the legislation and more than a dozen other bills in a political maneuver aimed at derailing passage of school vouchers legislation (which also failed in the 2012 session). Hutto, who favored the FOIA bill in committee, later removed the objection and the legislation could have proceeded to passage. He would have voted for it.
Enter the senator apparently waiting to act if nothing else could stop the legislation. Sen. John Scott, D-Richland, who was a vocal opponent of the bill in the full Judiciary Committee, attached an objection.
According to The Nerve, the investigative reporting website operated by the conservative S.C. Policy Council, Scott said he would like to have seen the details of the bill worked out at the subcommittee level. The details to which he referred apparently involve objections by at least two state agencies, though Scott would not name which agencies had raised concerns.
“The floor of the Senate is no place to iron out issues,” he said. “This bill hasn’t had any work on it, and it’s not fair to pass on legislation like that. We had two years to work it out, and I’m not going to just pass something out just to pass something out.”
Scott reportedly was being encouraged by organizations that represent government and government officials, which, ironically, have long histories of fighting FOIA in its everyday application. He was not going to change his stand.
What really may have spelled the death knell of the legislation, however, was an amendment that one may be surprised was not wanted by FOIA advocates.
With her own office’s records policies are under scrutiny, S.C. Republican Gov. Nikki Haley said she wanted lawmakers to lift the exemption in state law that allows them to shield their e-mails and other internal communication from public view. Haley described proposed changes to the state’s FOIA as just “window dressing” unless they include language to lift the lawmakers’ exemption. Rep. Rick Quinn, R-Lexington, added the amendment to pull lawmakers’ shield before the measure advanced to the Senate.
The extent of access to lawmakers’ e-mails and internal communications should be the subject of debate, but not in the context of basic improvements to FOIA. The Haley approach through the Quinn amendment politicized legislation that should have been approved in the public interest.
“We think this bill would have passed without the poison pill of the Quinn amendment to add removal of the legislative exemption,” S.C. Press Association Executive Director Bill Rogers said.
“I think our plan should be to regroup for next year “We can try to work … to fix the legislative exemption and maybe do some other fine tuning,” Rogers said. “We probably ought to try to get a companion bill introduced in the Senate and start early. This is the second year of a two-year session, so the bill will have to be refiled and start the process over.”
Meanwhile, the public loses again.
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