Records Commission

City of Gahanna 200 South Hamilton Road Gahanna, Ohio 43230 Meeting Minutes - Final Wednesday, September 15, 2010 8:50 AM City Hall Records Commission GAHANNA’S VISION is… … to be an innovative model community that values its rich heritage, pursues high standards and promotes respect among its citizens. GAHANNA’S MISSION is… … to ensure an exceptional quality of life by providing comprehensive services, financial stability, and well-planned development which preserves the natural environment, in order that city government will continue to be responsive, accessible and accountable to our diverse and growing community of citizens. All meetings and meeting agendas are subject to last minute changes. Please contact the Clerk’s Office at 614-342-4090 to confirm the date and time of this meeting or to request any special accommodations. Records Commission Meeting Minutes - Final September 15, 2010 A. CALL TO ORDER/ROLL CALL The meeting was called to order at 8:50a.m. by Weber. Additional Attendees: Thomas L. Weber; Rebecca W. Stinchcomb; Sharon Montgomery; Lt. Present: 2 - Isobel L. Sherwood MMC and Laura Dachenbach B. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Sherwood moved to approve the minutes of the July 28, 2010, meeting. Weber seconded and the motion carried. Montgomery noted that in the discussion of the records copy fee for police reports provided on CDs and DVDs, Mumma had recalled a previous discussion about police report costs and charges. Montgomery clarified that the previous discussion had been about increasing the flat rate for paper copies in accordance with the provision in the state budget bill. C. ITEMS FOR APPROVAL D. ITEMS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Data Security Montgomery said she had nothing to add to the written update in the meeting packets on encrypting data on storage media that leave the building and on the intent to discuss hard drive storage on photocopiers and fax machines with the new Information Technology Director and the copier vendor . There were no questions or discussion about the written update. City of Gahanna Page 1 Records Commission Meeting Minutes - Final September 15, 2010 2. Records Request Fee Schedule Montgomery explained that the schedule members received was for review and included columns with currently-approved charges, newly-calculated actual costs, and her recommendation for revisions based on the new calculations. She reminded everyone that the decision had been made in the past to charge for each copy rather than starting at a set number of copies or a set price. She said she is still concerned that our policy and practice are out of sync. Because of the bookkeeping paperwork involved and the need to make change, not all city offices charge according to the schedule. She said she is again recommending we start our charges at $1.00. Montgomery pointed out that one major change was the cost of our zoning code, which we extract from our full code book. She said we'd been charging $25. She counted the pages, checked the cost of the binder we use, and added in the map charge and found $8 to be closer to actual costs. Sherwood suggested charging $10 because the number of pages and the cost of the binder will vary as code changes are incorporated. Montgomery said the other major change was for police reports provided on CDs or DVDs. She said the police department has been charging $5 based on the costs we are allowed to include in the provisions for bulk data requests. She said the public records law is not clear on charges. The only definition of “actual costs” is in ORC 149.43(F) about state Bureau of Motor Vehicles requests and charges . However, cities are advised, even in the records training by state officials, to use that definition, in (F)(2)(a). She said she had asked Weber if we could apply 149.43(F)(2)(b) & (F)(2)(d) about “bulk commercial special extractions” for police reports since we apply (F)(2)(a) beyond the BMV. She said Weber said we probably could but when she asked him , she had forgotten about OAG 99-012 saying that the actual cost part could be broadly applied but the bulk extractions part could not be. Weber said we are not bound by Attorney General Opinions but they are a source of guidance. Lt. Spence said their most common records request is for offense reports, particularly crash reports. When the request pertains to the report on one specific incident, or to one specific 9-1-1 call, that data can be e-mailed to the requester and there is no charge. But, the most common requester is a “data miner” such as a lawyer, insurance company, chiropractor, etc. who is looking for multiple reports that might yield clients. Lt Spence said finding and providing these reports is very time-consuming and the department pays for the licensing and software needed to transfer the data from the recording system to a CD or DVD. For these reasons, the police have been charging $5 and recommend this charge be approved on this revision of the fee schedule. Stinchcomb asked if other cities are applying 149.43(F) to police reports. Spence said Hilliard has a monthly access fee for the online service they provide. Braun asked how the online reports provider, Reports USA, differs from the module that is part of what will be the city's new Web site. Spence said there is no difference in the way they work. Braun clarified that the city has already bought this module so it will be functional when our Web site is redesigned. City of Gahanna Page 2 Records Commission Meeting Minutes - Final September 15, 2010 Spence added that the in-cruiser recordings have video and metadata that requires proprietary information to understand. Sherwood concluded that we can't break out a per-copy cost so $5 was a reasonable flat rate. Spence added that $10 would be a reasonable rate for a monthly access fee for Internet access when it is available. Sherwood reminded everyone that having to recalculate our fees every three years doesn't limit us to three-year review and recommended we review this again when the new Web site is in place and the Internet access will become available. Dachenbach said the Municipal Court has a computer terminal in the court lobby for access to online court records. Montgomery said since 149.43(F)(2) applies to bulk requests, should we differentiate between bulk requests and individual requests? Stinchcomb said we shouldn't discriminate among requesters and Montgomery clarified that she meant differentiating among requests for bulk and single records. Spence clarified that the bulk requesters aren't asking for all reports, only the ones that might yield clients. Sherwood moved to approve the revised schedule as recommended by Montgomery with zoning code and police report recommendations as discussed. Stinchcomb seconded and the motion carried. Lt. Spence said he also wanted to discuss the retention for audio recordings. Their system will record three years plus five days' data from the 9-1-1 calls, the administrative phone line in the radio room, and some of the other phone extensions in the police building. He said the retention had been 31 days for those recordings. The video surveillance system is about to be upgraded. He recommended one year retention for both of these kinds of recordings. Montgomery reminded everyone that citizens generally have two years to sue us. Minors have two years after they turn 18 and she has read in one place that the limit is seven years for fatal crashes. For this reason, she generally recommends three years for any records we might need to defend ourselves in a lawsuit. Spence said three years of this data would require a large amount of electronic storage space even in the condensed form they store it in, and this would be expensive. Stinchcomb was concerned about storing, for instance, video surveillance of the lobby during times no one was in the lobby. Spence said the new system will let them analyze what to keep. Spence added that specific portions of the recording can be held longer by offloading it from the recording system's storage to separate storage. Montgomery compared this to the Parks & Recreation Dept.'s process to file liability waivers in youth registrations with incident reports so all the other waivers can be disposed of sooner, with the rest of the registration records. Weber pointed out that the burden for requesting a hold on records no longer falls solely on the city; attorneys need to know the retention periods and request holds. Consensus was that this should be presented at the next Records Commission meeting in the form of a retention schedule. City of Gahanna Page 3 Records Commission Meeting Minutes - Final September 15, 2010 3. Red Flag Rules Montgomery pointed out that the background for these rules was provided in packets and explained that she wanted clarification on applying the city's procedures. She said when she got a June records request for a water bill account, she reviewed the approved procedures and the updates that were based on Weber 's opinions on specific applications. Based on her interpretation of the updated procedures, she redacted account number, account holder name, billing address, and service address. She said in this case, the billed amount was so large that the requester would have little or no reason to doubt we have provided bills for the account in question but that for a private residence, for instance, the requester wouldn't have that assurance. She said that despite the fact that in general we are to disclose liberally, she decided in this case to err on the side of caution, reasoning that she could disclose more if she erred, but couldn't take back anything disclosed that shouldn't have been. Franey said the policy says account numbers are to be redacted and the opinions said names and addresses should not be provided. She said she feels the spirit of the Red Flag Rules is to protect the combination of information that could be misused. She said an account number, or a name, or an address in isolation is not an ID theft risk but when any two of those pieces of information are together, there is a risk. Dachenbach and Weber pointed out that with some information , a citizen can get related information from other public sources; we can't prevent that. There was agreement with Stinchcomb's assertion that the address is the only information the requester needs to be sure we have provided the account in question. And, there was agreement with Franey's recommendation to specify in the annual review of the policy that the account number and account holder's name but not the service address be redacted on bills we provide for public records requests. If the billing address is different from the service address, the billing address would be redacted. City of Gahanna Page 4 Records Commission Meeting Minutes - Final September 15, 2010 4. E-Communication Management ARCHIVING UPDATE McCorkle participated by speaker phone and gave an update on the e-mail archiving process. He said three products have been demonstrated and three more will be. They are looking first at the technical details then will look more at the records searching features. He said archiving will automatically offload messages that arrive in users' inboxes and will record those messages in separate storage, within 10 minutes of the time they are received in an inbox. Stinchcomb asked if non-record messages such as unsolicited sales pitches would be excluded. McCorkle said a tight spam filter will be used but there is no way to avoid offloading everything that gets through the filter. Stinchcomb asked if the archived storage will compress the data. McCorkle said it would and also would conserve space by copying only once any messages that arrived in more than one inbox as the same message. FORMER EMPLOYEES' STORED E-MAIL Discussion was based on a written explanation of the situation that was provided in packets. That explanation included the fact that we have more than seven years' messages from employees who have left city employment and while our current software can read them, they are too voluminous to read and sort by content. That explanation also offered possible options for disposal. McCorkle tried to participate in the discussion but phone reception from the meeting room was too poor so answered specific questions then hung up with the agreement we would call him back if needed. Braun asked which employee's messages went back the farthest and he said former Service Director Terry Jordan was the longest . McCorkle suggested one option could be to import the old messages into the archiving system so they would be retained and disposed of with current employees' messages. Discussion centered on the likelihood of any messages being needed after a few years. Montgomery explained that it was unusual to get a request for any records back more than a few years except for internal research requests, to understand previous actions and the decision-making process that led to those actions. Consensus was that adding them to the archival storage was more time- and labor-intensive than warranted. Weber said a rational retention schedule has to consider likelihood ; we can't anticipate and cover every possibility. Stinchcomb pointed out that any important business conducted or referenced in old messages is very likely to be reflected in other records which are kept longer. Consensus was that these messages did not need to be stored more than three years after that employee separated from city employment. SPARK INSTANT MESSAGING Braun reminded everyone that when IM was first provided by a previous IT Director, we were told it could not be saved so was not a public-record by the definition of City of Gahanna Page 5 Records Commission Meeting Minutes - Final September 15, 2010 “fixed medium.” Then our most recent IT Director, Grant Reveal, instructed McCorkle to enable the function that saved the messages. That made it a public records issue. Braun said this is used only internally. Sherwood said she stopped using it when the conversations evolved into what she wanted a record of. Stinchcomb suggested establishing a policy that this be used only for non-record messages, for messages that do not conduct public business. Sherwood asked if all employees have access to it. Braun said only full-time employees plus the part-time HR employee so he can act as intermediary for the HR Director. Consensus was that the Mayor and Braun would write a policy about appropriate use, that non-compliance by any individual employee would be a disciplinary issue, and that we would consider all instant messages already archived to be non-records. 5. Background Checks Montgomery explained that the Civil Service Secretary has made these files available to the candidates who are the subject of the checks and sometimes other cities where one of our candidates has applied will ask for the check we already did. She said the Secretary has asked questions about the propriety of disclosing these files so Montgomery has researched this. The Ohio Revised Code includes a number of job positions for which a check is required and for each of those, specifies that the records are confidential. However, there are a couple court decisions saying these records for police candidates are public except for any information in them that is protected by law. Montgomery gave the example of the legal exemption for personal residential information about police officers. She said if a candidate is already an officer somewhere else when he applies in Gahanna, then that information about him within the background check file is confidential. She said ORC also exempts information provided to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation & Information and wondered if information in our background check files might be from that source. Montgomery said she is also not clear on exactly what records we include when we use the common term, "background check." Is this only criminal records, or does it include a psychologist's report, or other information? She said she has asked HR Director Kristen Treadway for her opinion on what the term means but Treadway has been very busy and hasn't yet been able to answer. Sherwood reminded everyone that when the realignment of Civil Service and HR functions is complete and we have seen how it's going to play out, we will need to do a major overhaul of those retention schedules so she recommended we wait until a 2011 Records Commission meeting to discuss this, with input from Treadway. City of Gahanna Page 6 Records Commission Meeting Minutes - Final September 15, 2010 6. Case Law Update There were no questions or comments about the written updates provided in packets with agendas. The written update was a summary of Striker v. Smith decided in June in the 5th District Court of Appeals about the public records policy poster , Municipal Construction Equipment Operators' Labor Council v. City of Cleveland decided in May in the 8th District appeals court about request response time, and Davila v. Bucyrus decided in July in the Crawford Co. Common Pleas Court about rewriting police call tapes, with brief explanations of how those decisions related to Gahanna procedures. Our current procedures are in line with the two appeals court decisions. Montgomery said in the written update that the Davila case illustrates some need for review and discussion of our current procedures. 7. Legislative Update There were no questions or comments about the written updates provided in packets with agendas. All pending legislation reported at previous 2010 Records Commission meetings is still in committee due to the General Assembly 's summer recess. The update also reported the June 21, 2010, introduction of HB 556 which would prohibit asking about felony conviction on an employment application, but would still allow a criminal records check to be done. E. OFFICIAL REPORTS: 1. From Records Administrator None. F. COMMENTS, ITEMS NTO ON AGENDA None. G. NEXT MEETING Wednesday, November 3, 2010, at 8:45a.m. in the Council caucus room. H. ADJOURNMENT 10:05a.m., by consensus. Reported by Sharon Montgomery, Records Administrator City of Gahanna Page 7 Records Commission Meeting Minutes - Final September 15, 2010 APPROVED by the Records Commission, this day of 2013. Isobel L. Sherwood, MMC Clerk of Council City of Gahanna Page 8