TBE frustrated in quest for requested data

A representative of a citizens’ group defining their mission as “a movement to improve government by making it more transparent, participatory and collaborative” expressed frustration at thwarted efforts to obtain requested data from the city of Enterprise.

One of Take Back Enterprise founders Turner Townsend told those attending the Jan. 19 Enterprise City Council meeting that his request to the city for public records from the city’s general ledger from 2000 to 2016 in Microsoft Excel format had been responded to with an offer of “documents in a nonsearchable digital text format that would be 30,000 pages on a CD for a cost of $7,500.

“You don’t have to be an expert in accounting software to know that producing the document in Excel requires no more effort than producing it in the format that you offered to produce it in,” Townsend told the city council members. “You also don’t have to be an accounting expert to know that giving someone 30,000 pages of a general ledger in plain unsearchable text is just about as useful as giving them nothing at all.

“It’s simply too much information to process without the help of a search function,” Townsend said. “What happened to helping me in ‘any way, shape or form or fashion?’”

Townsend reminded Enterprise Mayor Kenneth Boswell that he, Boswell, had previously compared the citizens of Enterprise to stockholders of a public company. “I challenge you to find one single publicly traded company whose financials are not available online in Excel format,” Townsend said.

Townsend asked the council why he was having such difficulty obtaining copies of the financial documents he requested and why the cost to obtain them was $7,500. “Council, I come before you tonight to request that you intervene and demand more openness,” Townsend said. “Simply put, you cannot have it both ways. You can’t say the aforementioned things about the state of our city’s openness such as ‘We are as transparent and open as we can be’ and continue to hide behind this legalistic standard that you are hiding behind.”

“Take Back Enterprise” is a 501(c)(4), non-profit organization, created to provide information to the public about issues, voting records, to name a few items, and it is prohibited from actively engaging in politics as its primary function.

“Take Back Enterprise,” according to their website, is a non partisan organization with a goal to educate citizens on important issues. “It is a movement to improve government by making it more transparent, participatory and collaborative. TBE will help build the public’s trust and satisfaction in government, will improve government’s delivery of services and will create new opportunities for innovation.” TBE is not a Political Action Committee.

“We have received a total of approximately 10 separate requests (for information) in the last 60 days,” said Boswell, after the council meeting. “To date, we have answered all of the requests and have provided the requested information.

“We cannot stop what we are doing to address a request from a group for financial records,” Boswell said. “Not once has that group or any group been denied any requests. We have been handling requests long before they (TBE) started asking for information.”

Boswell said his office would help any citizen who asks. “But we are going to follow the law in responding to requests,” he said, citing an Oct. 2, 2006 State of Alabama Attorney General’s opinion abut a municipal agency’s requirement to reproduce and distribute public records. “The attorney general already has spoken to the issue of someone demanding that the city spend its time and resources to convert data and records into something like an Excel spreadsheet and said that is not required.

“The taxpayers would suffer and the law does not require it,” Boswell said. “Also, I asked (City of Enterprise Clerk) Steve (Hicks) to consult with his colleagues from all over the state. His response was unanimous that this request was unprecedented and that every other city clerk said that they would do exactly what we were doing and to follow the ordinance or resolution set in place.

“No one is required to pay any charge to look at records. Anyone can make an appointment and review whatever public records they want,” Boswell said. “Only if they want copies does the law say we are to charge for these copies. That is true for every governmental agency in this state.”

Boswell said the city charges 25 cents a page for copies, paper or otherwise. “When you request 15 years of records—more than 30,000 pages—that would take an extreme amount of time to copy and I believe the taxpayers of Enterprise would expect someone who requests that many records would pay a charge for them,” Boswell said, citing a municipal resolution that defines procedure for “requests to view and/or acquire copies” of public records. “We have a resolution that has been in place since 2005 that complies with state law,” Boswell said. “That is the law in this city and that’s what we are following.

“We have to provide public records in accordance with the law. We are not required to put them in a format that the requester desires,” Boswell said, referring to Townsend’s objection to receiving data in a PDF format. “We abide by, and follow, the law. We have an attorney who gives us the law and we follow it.

“The reason we chose the format is that a PDF file is the most commonly used file and it is not able to be manipulated,” Boswell said. “The last thing we want is information that is not factual being passed around. We understand groups are going to twist, turn and distort numbers and facts…and there is nothing that we can do about that other than show the facts and that’s what we have always done and will continue to do. We have nothing to hide here.

“We have to provide public records in accordance with the law. We are not required to put them in a format that the requester desires,” Boswell said. “We abide by, and follow, the law. We have an attorney who gives us the law and we follow it.

“We do, and should, operate the city like a public company and are answerable to the people just like stockholders of a company,” he added. “We have important business to get done and despite attempts from a group to cause division and controversy, we have more important responsibilities to our citizens.”