I am Absolutely SHOCKED (Not!)... to write today regarding the City of Chaska being in violation of State law. The Minnesota Government Data Practice Act governs the public's access to government data and also provides guidance as to what costs may be recovered in allowing the public to access such data. If you look at the City's official data request forms, they identify the cost on the bottom corner of the page which is followed by a backslash "plus tax." This backslash plus tax" is a violation of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. The violation is blatantly obvious. Why do I think this? because unlike some other voluntarily voiceless Council members, I usually bother to conduct a smidgeon of research:
Before I even go to other legal aspects of the MGDPA, I think it's worth noting that the Minnesota Department of Administration has an entire page on their website as to what can and what can't be considered to be part of an actual cost of providing a Data Request to a member of the public.
Also, Minnesota Statute Chapter 13.03 subdiv 3 states:
"(c) The responsible authority or designee shall provide copies of public data upon request. If a person requests copies or electronic transmittal of the data to the person, the responsible authority may require the requesting person to pay the actual costs of searching for and retrieving government data, including the cost of employee time, and for making, certifying, and electronically transmitting the copies of the data or the data, but may not charge for separating public from not public data. However, if 100 or fewer pages of black and white, letter or legal size paper copies are requested, actual costs shall not be used, and instead, the responsible authority may charge no more than 25 cents for each page copied."
All documents I requested amounted to less than 100 pages. Thus the City is not legally able to ask for actual costs.
Even in the event the City of Chaska were able to consider actual costs in fulfilling my requests, the Commissioner of Administration has previously opined in advisory opinion 94-059 that the City isn't allowed to consider sales tax in considering the actual costs of responding to data requests citing that:
" the issue was previously raised with the Minnesota Department of Revenue, which requires collection of sales tax by entities which are in the business of selling copies. The Department specifically exempted entities which are subject to the MGDPA from including sales tax in their charges for copies of government data"
..........in order to allow for thier compliance with the MGDPA.
Compliance with the MGDPA really isn't all that difficult but making that possible, though, requires a majority of council members who think beyond Estopinal suggestions and consider such basic, informational due diligence a part of their job. Unfortunately, such information such as this -easily gleaned from about 10 minutes of individual research - probably represents more than the Chaska council councilors including have collectively put forth over several months.
Despite the obviousness of this violation, I am a bit busy dealing with the lovely folks at Carver County at the moment. This violation is fairly minor in compared to the vast levels of incompetency coming out of the Carver County Attorney's office who as Peter Ivy stated
"frequently offer opinions on the MGDPA."
(I feel sorry for whoever is asking for the opinion because you mine as well have had one written by fifi the cat)
If I were the City, I would merely comply and not give me the pleasure.
