You say “Yes,” I say “No;” I don’t know why you say “Goodbye,” I say “Hello,” “Hello,” “Hello!”

    Apparently, a few weeks ago, a public governmental body held a meeting and presented to the board a Powerpoint presentation on a subject of interest to the board and also to a reporter attending the meeting.  Unfortunately, she had arrived late and missed the first part of the meeting, so she made an oral request for a copy of the presentation.

    She was told, in response to her request, that some of the slides belonged to a professional company who was doing work for the board and they weren’t ready to release them to the public yet.  She subsequently made a second request for the presentation and has had no response.  Of course, her question to me was were they a public record?

    We talked through that these are electronic records.  Electronic records are public records, just like paper records are public records.  Did the public governmental body “retain” a copy of the presentation?  Then, if it had it in its electronic records at the time her first request was made, it should have been released to her or the body should have, in declining to release it, cited the exception in Section 610.021 that allowed them to close that record.  (Although, considering that this presentation was made during an open meeting of the body and with members of the public in the audience, I admit I am hard-pressed to imagine what excuse the body could not make to close this record.)

    Plus, her second request a week later for the record makes it clear that they’ve exceeded their 72-hour window to properly and legally respond. And I don’t believe that they can say this is not a final proposal and therefore it’s not public, because I don’t see any legal argument that means a draft proposal is any different than draft minutes or any other “temporary” document that might have been retained by the public governmental body at the time the request comes in.

    I’d say this is a public governmental body that needs to rethink its position on this issue, because as far as I can tell, they don’t have a leg to stand on in this argument.