BLYTHEWOOD – After The Voice was charged $500 by Blythewood town hall for a response to an FOI (Freedom of Information) request last month, the following item appeared on the Jan. 28 town council meeting agenda for discussion; “A Review of the Town’s current FOIA policy and possible recommendations for changes to the Town’s IT vendor [Asset Technology Group].
Councilmembers Trish Hovis, Donald Brock, and Rich McKenrick had some tough questions for Interim Town Manager Ed Driggers going into the discussion, but council as a body ended the meeting by kicking the $500 FOI can down the road.
The Voice’s FOI requested documents pertaining to the newspaper’s investigation into what happened to $20,000 of hospitality tax revenue the Town awarded Edward Straiter/Universal CMG World Entertainment to produce and manage the Town of Blythewood’s 2025 Juneteenth event.
Town Attorney Pete Balthazar informed The Voice in an email on Jan. 16, that the Town’s cost for the search and retrieval of the requested emails will be $500, of which a deposit of $125 would have to be paid before the Town would engage Asset Technology Group, its IT vendor, to conduct the search.
On Jan. 27, The Voice obtained a copy of Asset Technology’s contract with the Town. A review of the contract by The Voice found no specific language regarding a $500 fee for email searches.
“[$500] strikes me as a bit excessive and somewhat of a deterrent,” Brock told Driggers as he opened discussion on the issue at the Jan. 28 meeting.
“Can you point to where in our agreement with Asset Technology is language that says they’re going to charge $500 for these searches?” Brock asked Driggers.
“Nope. It’s not in there,” Driggers answered. “What’s in the agreement are the services they provide to us. This [searching and providing emails] is outside the scope of what we are under contract with them for.”
“Then how do we comply with the FOI if we don’t have any language that outlines the IT vendor’s responsibility to us …unless we [search for the emails] in house, which we could,” Brock said.
“Actually, we cannot,” Driggers said.
“Why is that?” Brock asked.
“Because we do not host our data,” Driggers answered, suggesting that searching staff’s emails could raise privacy concerns. He went on to insist that he could only search his computer for his emails but that he could not search employee’s computers for their emails.
“Would I provide my own email to an FOI?” Councilwoman Andrea Fripp asked.
“I don’t think that’s very effec ive,” Driggers said,
“It may not be effective, but it does comply with FOI law,” Brock said.
“There is no expectation of privacy with government records,” said Media Attorney Jay Bender, who represents the South Carolina Press Association. “To outsource the maintenance of your public records to a private company seems to be inconsistent with the notion of transparency.”
While the Town charged The Voice $500 for emails between a limited number of specific people, Town Clerk Sharon Durst spoke up, saying that the Town received an FOI request for emails between her and Mayor Griffin. She said the Town’s IT vendor did search her computer and put the documents in a file, but did not charge her for that.
“They said if they searched for certain keywords that they would charge,” Durst said. “But there was no charge.”
The Dec. 19 request from The Voice sought emails between specific individuals rather than keyword-based searches.
“Ok, so now we’ve got conflicting information,” Brock said. “Certain searches they charge for and certain searches they don’t charge for. That is a bit of a problem I think.”
“I would agree,” Driggers said.
“Mr. Driggers, can we get some kind of clarification on what would trigger a fee for some sort of research?” Brock asked.
“I’ve had those conversations with the [Asset Technology Group’s] CEO,” Driggers said. “They do have answers. I’m just waiting for somebody to ask me why?”
“Go ahead,” Brock said, “Tell me what you know.”
“I cannot speak to why it was done differently [for the town clerk] but their policy is that they have a minimum charge of $150 an hour for a minimum of two hours. Whether that service can be done in five minutes …all of my conversations prior to the one this week was at $500,” Driggers said. “This week they’re talking about $300.”
That pricing also is not specific to emails in Asset Technology’s contract. The contract states: $150 fee for non ATG Device Onboard – Server / San.
Driggers then suggested that Asset Technology might consider options such as a person submitting a set number of FOIs per year for free and pay for any over that amount. Driggers gave as an example, four FOI requests per year.
Balthazar Interprets FOI Law
“So, are we still complying with the state statute covering FOI responses if what [the requester] pays is not the prorated hourly salary of the lowest paid employee who can reasonability do the work for us, because we are in a third-party contract?” asked McKenrick.
“Correct,” Balthazar said, “That is my belief. If we’re doing it in-house, what we can charge in-house is the prorated hourly salary of the lowest-paid employee who has the necessary skill and training to perform that task. If we don’t do it in-house, we have to go [to a third party vendor] to be able to get those services.
“The FOIA says we can collect reasonable fees not to exceed the actual cost of the search, retrieval, and redaction of records,” Balthazar said. “To me, that’s what the third-party vendor [Asset Technology} is doing. It is doing the search and retrieval of those records.
“The FOIA is saying: ‘Town, it’s going to be $500 or $300,” Balthazar said. “And, so, yes, I deal with FOIA a lot. But, the transparency, the freedom to obtain records …if that’s a cost to the Town, I’m certainly not at liberty to waive any cost to the Town in that situation.”
Rewriting the FOI
During the Town’s strategic planning meeting on Jan. 12, council members urged Interim Town Manager Ed Driggers to reduce the costs and shorten the wait time for the public to receive the Town’s FOI responses.
“Our FOIA policy needs to be tightened up,” Councilman Donald Brock had said. “There’s no reason we should take 40, 50 days to produce something that’s available electronically in 10 minutes.”
But at the end of the Jan. 28 council meeting, Brock left it to Driggers to “have a kind of additional conversation with Asset Technology Group’s CEO and bring back a couple of different options for us to review?”
“Absolutely,” Driggers said. “And I’ll go so far as to ask council to allow me to review your FOIA policy and bring back a recommendation for possible revisions?”
“Sure,” Brock said.
As of Feb. 4, the Town has not yet issued a determination on all items requested in The Voices’ Dec. 19 FOI request. Under the FOI Act, agencies have 10 working days to notify a requester if documents can and will be produced. The Town is now 19 days past the 10-day deadline to make a determination of all items requested, including copies of the application and contract between Edward Straiter/Universal CMG World Entertainment and the Town of Blythewood and a copy of the reconciliation that should have been submitted to the Town by Straiter after the $20,000 was spent.
Council next meets on Feb. 23 at the Manor.
