Open-government advocates say high fees sometimes can stymie efforts to get public information from the government.

The Advertiser's effort to obtain crash data from the state Department of Transportation is but one example.

After the agency rejected the newspaper's request to get the data, The Advertiser appealed to the state Office of Information Practices in 2005. The OIP sided with the newspaper, ruling the information, stripped of confidential personal information, is public.

But the OIP agreed with the transportation agency when it determined that the newspaper, not the DOT, must foot the estimated tab of $20,000 for the software to remove the personal information, allowing the remaining data to be provided to The Advertiser in electronic form.

The newspaper has yet to get the data and only recently resurrected its request in a modified form. The DOT intends to seek a second opinion from the OIP.

High fees for researching, deleting and copying documents are becoming more of a concern across the country, especially at the state and local government levels, according to James Benton, director of ethics for Common Cause in Washington, D.C. At the federal level, the main obstacle is time: records requests can languish for years.

"Unfortunately, it's all too common," Benton said of the barriers.

Few high-fee cases come to the OIP's attention, partly because some are resolved before those making a request feel they need help. The prospect of high fees sometimes encourages the requester and agency to reach agreement on what information is sought and what documents will fulfill the request.

$880 FEE FOR TAPE

That wasn't the case when open-government advocate Larry Geller requested a copy of an audio tape last year from the Board of Education. Geller wanted to hear what was said during a September executive session meeting in which Jim Shon was fired as executive director of the Charter School Administrative Office.

The board wanted to charge Geller $880 for an edited copy of the audio tape. The board said it needed to hire a company to make a 50-page transcript of the recording, have a deputy attorney general review the transcript to delete the confidential portions, then hire an audio services company to make the deletions on the tape.

Geller was told he had to pay the $880 before the work would be done.

Geller's quest for the audio tape was round two in his battle for information on the board's firing of Shon. Geller previously fought to get the written minutes for the same September meeting. It took the intervention of the OIP, which provides oversight for Hawai'i's open-records law, before Geller got those minutes.

"This has been a stonewalling operation from beginning to end," Geller said. "This whole thing has been a struggle to get information that belongs to the public in the first place."

Late last month, the OIP sided with Geller again. It determined that the $880 fee was unreasonable and cannot be charged.

In a March 5 letter responding to the OIP's latest ruling, Karen Knudsen, head of the board, said her agency lacked the resources or technical abilities internally to respond to Geller's request, explaining the need to turn to outside companies.

Geller said the case has dragged on so long that the information he sought has, for the most part, lost its value.

FEE OBSTACLES

While high costs can prod citizens to refine the focus of their requests, agencies sometimes use fees as a way to discourage or prevent people from pursing requests for information that clearly is public, according to open-government advocates.

Environmental advocate Carroll Cox, who has filed hundreds of information requests, said he's had federal agencies tell him the estimated costs to initially research some of his requests would top $1,000 — before he even saw the first documents.

"It's just (presenting) an obstacle, without disclosing any documents or telling you what you're going to get," Cox said.

As in the audio tape case, an agency typically will ask for full or partial payment before the work is done.

State rules permit an agency to seek in advance half the estimated search, review and segregation fees and 100 percent of the remaining fees, such as the estimated copying charges.

Les Kondo, OIP director, said he believes his office hears few fee complaints because for most records requests, agencies end up not charging any fees. This is because the law requires the first $30 of information request fees be waived or, if the information is to be widely disseminated such as by the media, the first $60 is free.

If a request is overly broad, the search itself can take dozens or even hundreds of hours and the cost can escalate.

Requests often can be refined to a more manageable level or fees eliminated altogether, Kondo said. "There are a lot of very, very helpful (government) people who will talk to that person and help that person get the information," he said.

ROADBLOCK

Such assistance is not always what citizens encounter, however.

Retiree Walter Lewis found little help in trying to get information from the Kaua'i County government. He and fellow retiree Raymond Chuan were denied access to the County Council's executive sessions minutes from 2002 through 2004 — even though the OIP eventually determined the records were public and must be released.

The county at one point told the two they could get an unspecified portion of the records but only if they paid about $2,800 to cover the cost of searching, editing and copying. The county wouldn't identify the type of documents they would get, Lewis said, so they balked at paying.

The pair eventually sued the county, saying it violated the state's open-records law. The county has denied wrongdoing and, in turn, has sued the OIP, asking the court to overturn the agency's order dealing with minutes from one meeting. The lawsuits are pending.

"The obstacles still persist," Lewis said.

Reach Rob Perez at rperez@honoluluadvertiser.com.