Government agencies in Arkansas too often continue to stumble over one of the simplest obligations in the Freedom of Information Act: the duty to redact public records--the process of removing or obscuring information that the law prohibits from disclosure--at the government's expense.

When a public record contains both public and exempt information, the Arkansas FOIA requires the agency to separate the two. The exempt portion must be removed (blacked out). The remainder must be released. This is not optional. It is not a courtesy. Not a special service. The duty is statutory. And the Arkansas Supreme Court has reinforced this principle repeatedly.

While the idea of redaction seems generally understood, who pays for it isn't.

The FOIA allows agencies to charge requesters only for the actual cost of reproduction--meaning the materials cost of the copies, not the cost of preparing them. Labor is not a reproduction cost. Time spent reviewing a file is not a reproduction cost. Consulting with counsel is not a reproduction cost. A marker used to black out a name is not a reproduction cost. Printing a page solely to redact it is not a reproduction cost. These are all internal administrative choices, and the public cannot be charged for them. The Legislature made this policy deliberately: Transparency is a public good, and the price of complying with the law is part of the cost of being a government.

What are the reproduction costs? The printer paper and ink, if the requester seeks hard copies. Nothing if the requester seeks scanned copies.

Yet despite the clarity of the........

© Arkansas Online