Costs can vary greatly to obtain public documents
Municipalities lack guidelines on what they can charge people
SASKATOON This fall, the Saskatoon Starphoenix and Regina Leader-post emailed every city, town, village, resort village, northern municipality and rural municipality in Saskatchewan to request the same set of public documents.
The goal of the Fees May Apply enterprise was to gather information and to test transparency. Many provided the documents for free, but others charged an array of fees.
What does it cost to access public documents from local governments in Saskatchewan?
That depends on where you ask. The province has no rules or regulations setting out how much governments can charge to release public documents, which has left
Saskatchewan’s 774 local governments to come up with their own policies — or to create fees on a case-by-case basis on the fly.
While some local governments have documents such as operating budgets available online or will provide them for free upon request, some charge significant amounts for the same information.
This fall, the Saskatoon Starphoenix and Regina Leader-post emailed every city, town, village, resort village, northern municipality and rural municipality in Saskatchewan to request their most recent operating budget and four items that all municipalities are mandated to have: an employee code of conduct, a council procedures bylaw, a council member code of ethics and public disclosure statements for council members.
Though the Local Authority Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (LA FOIP) sets out how much municipalities can charge to provide records that may contain private information, the documents the Starphoenix/ Leader-post requested were public and did not fall under this act.
The provincial government and presidents of both the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) and the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) agree the requested documents are public items and should be made available when requested.
In total, 541 municipalities responded to the Starphoenix/leader-post within 60 days, a total response rate of 70 per cent.
One village could not be reached because there was no listed email address on the provincial municipal directory and the phone number listed on the directory was not in service.
A little over half of the municipalities — 405, or 52 per cent — provided some or all of the requested documents at no cost, or directed the Starphoenix/leader-post to websites where the information was publicly available. Some municipalities said some or all documents could be viewed for free if the Starphoenix/leader-post came to their offices.
Some admitted they did not know where the documents were, or whether they even existed.
“I have just taken over this office, the previous admin did not leave on good terms and I am having a terrible time finding the items you are requesting, in fact I would not be surprised if the bylaws were never passed. This poor little village is in terrible shape and honestly if I stumble across the items in my search I will forward them,” one village spokesperson said in an email.
Under LA FOIP, the fee for documents includes a $20 application fee, copying fees of $0.25 a page and staff time of $15 per half-hour for time in excess of an hour. But the Starphoenix/leaderpost found that fees for public documents varied widely.
Some municipalities simply asked for postage to send the documents, since administrators were unable to send them electronically due to equipment or internet constraints.
Some asked the papers to fill out a formal LA FOIP form and pay the $20 application fee. Per-page scanning fees ranged from $0.10 to $3.50. Some municipalities charged for administrative time to collect documents, with rates ranging from $25 to $65 per hour. Some municipalities had search fees or flat administrative fees. Some charged by the document, with costs ranging from $1 to $200.
Twenty-four municipalities sent invoices of $100 or more for the documents. Two of those municipalities later sent most or all of the documents, despite the Starphoenix/leader-post indicating the fees would not be paid.
The heftiest bill came from the Rural Municipality of Wallace, a community of about 900 people just east of Yorkton. That RM charged $2,200 for all documents: $200 per item. Each of the seven elected officials’ public disclosure statements was treated as a separate item with a separate $200 price tag.
The RM of Wallace has a website, but the public documents the Starphoenix/leader-post requested are not posted.
RM of Wallace Reeve Garry Liebrecht said a resolution to set fees at $200 per document was made this fall, after the RM received the Starphoenix/leader-post’s request. He said many public documents are available on the town office’s bulletin board and people can view them during office hours, but fees will be involved if documents need to be mailed or emailed. A date and time for the Starphoenix/leader-post to talk with Liebrecht further about the fees was set, but Liebrecht cancelled the interview after learning he would not be paid for it.
Rounding out the top-10 list for highest fees were the RMS of Tisdale ($520), Elcapo ($500), Heart’s Hill ($300.30), Souris Valley ($278.52), Rocanville ($275), Lomond ($262.50), Wawken ($225), Stonehenge ($222.34) and Whiska Creek ($157.50).
SARM President Ray Orb said he was “a little bit surprised” by some of the high fees.
He said SARM makes it clear to rural municipalities that public documents need to be made available as expediently as possible and any fees need to be “reasonable.”
“They need to be able to justify that to themselves, to their members in their community. So I would hope that they could do that,” Orb said.
The Starphoenix/leader-post emailed the communities with the 10 highest invoices to ask about their fees. Some did not respond.
The RM of Tisdale has a website listed on the provincial municipal directory, but the URL appears to be a dead link. The RM’S fees were so high because the community of roughly 900 people about 200 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon invoiced the Starphoenix/leaderpost for administrative fees of $65 an hour for eight hours of work.
When the Starphoenix/leader-post emailed to ask about the fees, the administrator suggested they could be lowered.
“At the time of your request, I was brand new to this position as was my assistant. Added to that, it was our busiest time for tax collection. When I took your list to council, they felt that the rate quoted was reasonable given the amount of time it would take us to find the requested info. It would also compensate for the time lost from our jobs,” the RM’S administrator wrote in an email.
The administrator said that, since the invoice was sent, she and her assistant had settled into regular routines and “feel that (the) request is not as daunting as it was.” She said the Starphoenix/leader-post could submit its request again to receive the documents at a cost of $1 per page.
The RM of Elcapo, a community of fewer than 500 people located 150 kilometres east of Regina, does not have a website. It charged the Starphoenix/leader-post $100 per document, including $100 for a file with seven public disclosure statements.
“In the discussion that led to setting this fee Council gave consideration to what the ratepayers of the R.M. are being charged when they request similar documents from other institutions,” the administrator said in an email.
Roughly 250 people live in the RM of Heart’s Hill, roughly 250 kilometres west of Saskatoon. The
RM has a website where council minutes and agendas are posted, as well as some bylaws and policies.
Reeve Gordon Stang said in an emailed statement that “it is very uncommon” for people to request public documents and the RM does not have a policy or resolution detailing what it charges for document requests. It charged the Starphoenix $250 for the RM administration to prepare the documents plus $0.50 a page and GST for a total cost of $300.30.
“We commend our office staff for their continued service and dedication toward a common goal of reorganization of the office. The goal has not yet been achieved,” Stang said.
“The timing of your request added extra duties to our office staff who are very busy with internal projects. Therefore, we felt in all fairness to the staff, we would have them come in after hours at overtime rates to complete your request.”
That estimate was $60 per hour for three hours. He said no research was done to determine photocopy rates before $0.50 a page was decided on.
“We are not in the copying business, nor do we plan to become competitive copiers so have not researched the market, nor are we aware or concerned of what other RM (sic) provided,” Stang said.
The RM of Whiska Creek, a community of less than 500 people roughly 70 kilometres southeast of Swift Current, also does not have a website. Costs for documents are so high because the municipality charges $2.50 per sheet for photocopying.
Administrator Teresa Richards said council passed a resolution to set those fees to discourage people from coming to the RM office and asking staff to photocopy documents such as Christmas letters.
Richards said anyone who comes to the RM office and requests public documents can see them — but she can’t recall a time in her nine years as RM administrator that anyone has asked to view a public document other than the zoning bylaw.
“I would say that we’re very transparent. The doors here are open for any ratepayer or anybody to come in and request information,” Richards said.
“If they want to come into the office and they don’t need a copy of it, I’m more than happy to show it to them. It’s public knowledge. Most of the people that come in here are ratepayers and they are the ones that have access to that information for sure. It’s their municipality.”
She added that if anyone has concerns about the cost of public documents they are welcome to ask council to review it.
Orb and SUMA President Gordon Barnhart say some municipalities may have more difficulty in responding to requests for public documents than others.
Orb said many small municipalities aren’t often asked for documents and the Starphoenix/leader-post
request created “a bit of a learning curve.”
Some of Saskatchewan’s local governments are still predominantly paper-based and don’t have electronic copies of documents. Some don’t have access to high-speed internet, which makes uploading documents to emails or websites challenging. Some rely on administrators who work part-time and may need to handle the needs of more than one municipality.
“For (administrators) only working, say, two days a week to cover all of the administrative duties even of a village is a stretch,” Barnhart said. “So the fact that some of (the municipalities) perhaps haven’t responded is not surprising. And I don’t think that’s a sign that they don’t feel that they’re open and transparent. It’s just more a factor of the time commitments on their part.”
Barnhart sits on the council of the Town of Saltcoats, a community of nearly 500 people about 250 kilometres northeast of Regina. The community has a website where some public documents are posted, but the documents the Starphoenix/leader-post requested are not online.
Saltcoats did not acknowledge multiple requests for documents from the Starphoenix/leader-post — something Barnhart attributes to the fact that the town was without an administrator for much of the summer and fall. He said such a situation is not unusual.
“There’s a dearth of administrators, especially for the smaller communities. And if one leaves it’s sometimes very difficult to get another one to come in as a replacement. So the transition sometimes can perhaps not be very smooth,” Barnhart said. “We are scrambling to keep up with the day to day.”
Barnhart said SUMA has been talking with Saskatchewan Polytechnic about the possibility of that school developing a new program to train administrators. If such a program is launched, he said he hopes it would help address the administrator shortage in the province.
If people are concerned about local governments providing access to public documents, Orb and Barnhart recommend they request a meeting with the local council to discuss the issue. Beyond that, they can make formal complaints to the province’s privacy commissioner or ombudsman.
They hope such instances are few and far between.
“We encourage our municipalities to be open and transparent, particularly to the ratepayers because they need to know what’s happening within their particular municipality,” Barnhart said.
“Our municipalities try their very best with the limited resources they have to get that done.” Orb echoed that sentiment. “Local people need to know what’s going on in their own RMS,” he said. “And if they can’t find the information that should be provided to them — or must be provided to them — then I think the councils need to take a second look at that and change the way that they operate.”
I would say that we’re very transparent. The doors here are open for any ratepayer or anybody to come in and request information.