Senate passes open records timeline bill
The Alabama Senate voted in favor of a bill Thursday that would require government agencies to acknowledge and respond to public records requests within a certain timeframe.
Under existing law, citizens have the right to inspect and obtain a copy of public records of the state, within certain parameters. But there are no required deadlines for responses from agencies.
“Right now, in current law, it is the wild west,” bill sponsor Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, said on the Senate floor. “ We don’t have timelines for governments or universities to respond in due time,” Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the sponsor of the bill said.
Orr emphasized the requestor must be an Alabama citizen.
Senate Bill 270 says a public officer must acknowledge the request within 10 business days of receiving it and must provide a substantive response fulfilling or denying it within 15 business days of acknowledgment. The official is granted the right to extend the time by 15 business day increments.
Requests have to be made by Alabama citizens and the bill doesn’t include access to police body cam footage, Orr said. A Senate committee Wednesday rejected a bill to make law enforcement videos public record.
The legislation also allows for “reasonable fees” to complete requests. Agencies are not obligated to respond to public records requests that are vague, ambiguous, overly broad or unreasonable.
If an agency doesn’t respond, the legislation sets out timeframes for when a civil lawsuit could be filed in an attempt to access the records.
The bill now goes to the House. Orr has sponsored similar legislation in previous sessions.
A 2020 study by the National Freedom of Information Coalition that scored states based on ease of access to public records ranked Alabama with a score of 10 out of 100, the single lowest score out of all 50 states.
Senate discusses corrections communications
Members of the Senate discussed but did not vote on a bill Thursday that would allow the commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections to hire more administrators to help run prison operations and appoint 15 employees to provide constituent services, including communications with inmates’ families, at ADOC’s central office and 14 major prisons.
Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, the sponsor of Senate Bill 332, said the bill came out of a Joint Prison Oversight Committee public hearing in December. Inmates’ families shared gruesome stories about the violence and injuries their loved ones endured and said information about inmates’ well being is often hard to get.
“One of the things that we were made aware of at that public hearing is that communication is a problem,” Chambliss said. He said there are several reasons for that, one being a lack of staff.
Senate Bill 322 would require the Joint Prison Oversight Committee to study and address issues related to services provided by the Department of Corrections to constituents and families of inmates.
Chambliss emphasized the importance of this bill because of the miscommunication from prisoners to family members. He shared that many family members are told false information and then left without answers.
The Senate agreed to carry the bill over meaning there wasn’t a vote Thursday and the bill can come up at any time.