A comment from “Thomas” on the previous post on Sunshine Law rights raises an interesting question:

Given the current laws, can school boards or other government agencies charge for a request to put information online (at a publicly accessible URL)? After all, no toner or paper need be consumed in that process.

This may be a good time to repeat a caveat in my top-line page, “Disclaimers and Disclosures”: I am not a lawyer. A definitive answer would have to come from the new Office of Open Records. However, in this case the law seems clear to me. School boards can’t be compelled to provide information in a form that doesn’t already exist (e.g., as a web page). If they do post information online, however, that’s a public service, not chargeable to any single individual. (The pertinent sections of the Right to Know Law are Sections 704 & 705.)

When my school board (Carlisle Area SD) discussed photocopying fees, some board members suggested charging nothing at all on the grounds that keeping the public informed should be considered a normal cost of doing business. Most members (including me) worried about the occasional crank (or lazy graduate student): “I demand copies of your board minutes, budgets, and check registers for the past 25 years.” We agreed to what I think is a reasonable policy: Any requester gets the first 40 pages per year for free, paying 25 cents per page after that. (The actual fee schedule is slightly more complicated, but that’s the gist of it.) We intend to put most kinds of current information online, playing catch-up as needed. Our bias is toward openness, tempered by a conviction that the public won’t be well served if we encourage frivolous requests. We even hope to save a little money by not handling lot of nickle-and-dime cash transactions.

If the public asks often enough for current copies of the handful of documents that matter — test-score data, board minutes, budgets, check registers, and union contracts — I think most boards will post them to avoid hassles. But if boards are to get the transparency religion, their constituents must learn to rely on the promise of Matthew 7:7: “Ask, and it will be given to you (electronically); seek and ye shall find (online)…”