Last month I contacted the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) archives with a query related to one of my projects. My query was in two parts. The first related to locating the source of photographs owned by the agency and which were reproduced in a book written by a longtime Montgomery County Parks Department historian based on his work for the agency and using agency materials. The photos published in the book contained no source citation beyond “MNCPPC Archives.”
Screen capture from Dwyer, Michael. Montgomery County (2006, Arcadia Publishing), page 45.
The second part of my query involved records related to the acquisition of properties to assemble a county park near Silver Spring. My request to the M-NPCPPC archives reads,
Records related to the acquisition of properties for the Northwest Branch Park. I am interested in records and correspondence related to complaints filed by property owner HYSON and his legal representative. The M-NCPPC acquired two parcels adjacent to Hyson’s in the 1950s (these are identified as “Parcel A” in Plat No. 4453 filed February 1956) and the M-NCPPC acquired Hyson’s property in 1972 (recorded in deed Liber 4325, folio 465, etc.). The tracts comprising “Parcel A” in the 1956 plat were partly recorded in the following deed, 1) Liber 2295, folio 302 (Wheeler to M-NCPPC, December 1956). The parcels were acquired forUnit 4 of the Northwest Branch Park.
Two weeks after submitting my query, I received an email from the Montgomery County Parks Department’s public information and customer service manager with a request that I immediately remit a $980 payment to cover half of the estimated staff services the agency calculated it would take to answer my query. The email included this letter:
Dumbstruck doesn’t come close to my reaction. I was flummoxed because of the price tag and, perhaps more importantly, how the agency’s response differed from a similar request that I had made two year earlier.
The difference I suspect has to do with the fact that over the past two years I have written articles critical of the agency. Back in 2016, I had not yet written about racially biased historic preservation practices and parks interpretation. I wonder if this arbitrary approach to responding to queries from the public is legal? I have some thoughts about whether it’s ethical. What do some of the journalists reading this think?
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I recall both residents & journalists raising objections to costs charged for addressing public information requests that may take an especially long time, lots of photo copies, etc. while at the County Council. I also recall journalists, in particular, pushing back against paying any charge for such requests (beyond something very small), on the grounds that they were contrary to the 1st Amendment. Responses to such arguments varied, again, if I recall accurately.
I’m not a lawyer, never worked at M-NCPPC (though I interacted with them a great deal, professionally) and am not in a position to accurately assess the particulars of your current request & the M-NCPPC response, per se. However, the contrast between the response you shared above from 2016 & the current one is palpable.
The general rule of thumb I was given by the legal staff at the Council in my day was to: a) assume the information requested, whether formally expressed as an MPIA request or not, was subject to prompt disclosure and b) keep the requestor apprised of any partical delays/challenges in meeting the request. As a personal Council staffer, I was never involved in determining when charges would apply, per the Act, let alone what those charges would be. Then again, anything asked of our individual office was either quickly available or the information didn’t exist. The situation with Council institutional information was more complex, I presume. I anticipate the same is the case at M-NCPPC.
That all said, certainly a $980 estimate at 50% (or even if it was the final charge), would shock anyone. I too am curious about the thoughts of journalists regarding your situation, especially those who have interacted with Park & Planning. I’d also find it interesting to hear any thoughts about situations like this from lawyers with expertise with the MPIA. This is certainly an important issue, without speculating about any alterior motives by anyone involved.
Sorry for the long comment, but as I alluded to above, I had some experience with these type of matters, generally, and remain interested about how they are addressed today.
I am just a playwright, not a journalist nor an academic, But I am quite curious about local, county, state and federal governments’ obfuscation (a.k.a shucking and jiving) about “official and, therefore, legal” procurement of African-American property. This exorbitant charge to search for something that probably has been or is being destroyed is a story in and of itself.