Pay to play
We appreciate that the Weston County Commissioners conducted what appeared to be a thorough and sincere conversation about setting an appropriate fee schedule for public record requests. Unfortunately, while they succeeded in producing a system that is more consistent than what previously existed, we believe that they failed to provide one that is fair to the public because it creates even more opportunities for county officials to abuse loopholes in existing state law.
Given a well-documented pattern of reluctance to produce public records on the part of some of these officials, the new fee schedule will almost certainly be used to deny the citizens of Weston County of their basic right to access public records.
The commissioners came to this unfortunate conclusion because they mistakenly believe that providing public records for inspection is “extra work” for the officials entrusted with the care of those records. In fact, the opposite is true, and the commissioners are relying on a misinterpretation of Wyoming law to assume
otherwise.
Public records custodians have two essential tasks — the care and preservation of public records and making those records available to individuals who wish to inspect them — and public officials are already paid by the taxpayers to perform those essential duties. Assessing a fee to members of the public who ask officials to produce the records in their care is essentially double-dipping on the taxpayers dime, and should only occur when a request is deemed excessive or counter to the public interest. The Wyoming Legislature approved the adoption of fee schedules for public record requests under this rationale in 2019, but public officials have ignored the legislature’s intent and used the law to discourage, or even prevent, members of the public from accessing records that they have a right to inspect.
The Weston County Commissioners — on the advice of Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock — claim that it is excessive to request public records that take longer than 15 minutes to produce, and even suggested that such a move is necessary to prevent the public from abusing the system. In doing so, they willfully chose to ignore all of the documented occasions in which Weston County officials — including the commissioners and clerk themselves — have abused the system to prevent the public from accessing records and information to which they are entitled.
In fact, the commissioners only took action to establish the fee schedule — which they were directed to do by Wyoming law in 2019 — after this newspaper was forced to make a public record request after we discovered counting errors in the 2024 general election. We are still waiting to retrieve the entirety of the record requested in spite of the fact that both the county attorney and Wyoming Public Records Ombudsman have declared that the records are public, and should have been delivered — without a fee — in 30 days or less. The 30-day deadline expired on
Feb. 20.
Instead of acknowledging the failure of the Weston County Clerk to comply with existing law, the county commission has chosen to reward her, and make it even easier for her to abuse the authority and control she has over the public record. Providing only a 15-minute grace period before allowing her to charge a fee to produce a document all but guarantees that even the most simple and basic requests will result in charges being assessed to members of the public — to inspect documents that already belong to them!
This is particularly true for members of the public — or press — who have expressed dissatisfaction with the performance of county officials.
Trust in Weston County government is at an all-time low — and justifiably so — because of this type of abuse, and the commissioners’ latest action does nothing to bridge that trust gap. Instead, it empowers public officials to prevent public involvement in county government by creating a pay-to-play system, and placing it completely under the discretion and control of individuals who have already demonstrated a desire to impede the public’s right to know what their government is doing for them — and to them.