October 2008
PIA abuse protection is MIA
By Jim Walsh

It is time for the Legislature to fix the Public Information Act. It is broken.

Major surgery is not required. But there is a real problem that needs a real fix. 

The problem is that the law is so easily abused. It takes just one overly zealous person to tie up a school district with an endless stream of PIA requests. Every request requires staff time. Many requests require legal review. Some result in a formal request for an Attorney General’s Opinion.

The PIA begins with a sweeping statement of governmental philosophy. It states that “government is the servant and not the master of the people.” It reminds us that “the people … do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”

We agree with all of that. But we also know that there are too many instances in which this precious right has been abused for no good reason. Under current law, there is nothing that can be done about PIA abuse.

Some fear that any amendment to the PIA will start us down the slippery slope toward the bad, old days. But we don’t know of anyone who is advocating major changes in the PIA.  In fact, more and more governmental entities voluntarily are becoming more transparent. These days, we citizens can read the school board agenda and minutes, and even look over the district’s check register, from our laptops as we sip coffee at Starbucks. More transparency is not only politically popular, it is technologically irresistible.

The problem is that while you read the board agenda, the guy at the next table may be “cyber-filing” his 27th PIA request of the month, seeking every email communication between every district employee in search of some “sinister conspiracy.”

Let’s be clear about the problem. The problem is not the media. PIA requests from the media are targeted toward a particular story. Moreover, professional reporters have a pretty good sense of what is available to them and what is not. They usually are not on a fishing expedition; they are looking for specific information about public business so that they can write a story. That’s exactly what the PIA is about.

The problem is also not with the interested citizen who thinks the school district spent too much on the football stadium, the superintendent is overpaid, or the board stayed in too swanky of a hotel at the convention. No one would question the public’s right to know about such things.

The problem is that some people use the PIA for sport — as a hobby — to harass people who work for the government. The Legislature implicitly acknowledged this last session. It enacted Section 552.275 of the Government Code, which allows a governmental entity to establish a “reasonable limit” on how much time its staff will spend on PIA requests before charging costs to the requestor. This law also implicitly acknowledged that the problem is not the media; the law does not apply to requests from radio and TV stations or newspapers.

Defining PIA abuse in a way that does not infringe on the public’s right to know is not an easy thing to do. But it is time to tackle this problem. The Legislature should hear testimony about how this “reasonable limit” on staff time works in practice. We think that many school superintendents would report that it has not helped one bit in curtailing PIA abuse.

The next session is just around the corner and there are many legislative initiatives that must be addressed. We hope for more-equitable school funding, a better accountability system, and a fix to the problem of PIA abuse.

JIM WALSH is editor in chief of Texas School Business and the managing editor of Texas School Administrators’ Legal Digest. Also a school attorney, he co-founded the firm of Walsh, Anderson, Brown, Gallegos & Green, P.C. He can be reached at jwalsh@wabsa.com  or by visiting www.walshanderson.com.