BY JACOB SZETO

PORTLAND - In an Oregon Politico effort to obtain city records, a city staffer revealed that the highest paid staff is usually the one fulfilling the low-level records requests.

Public records requests are requests made by citizens to their government for information. In Oregon, the citizen is charged for the staff time to make the records available. State law specifies that only “actual cost” of making the records available can be charged.

In a conversation with a City staff member, the staff member told Oregon Politico that, in her experience, “98 percent of the time the highest paid person is doing the request.” She explained that they do not pick who does the request, only that the highest paid person is usually the least utilized at the time.

The Cost

Oregon Politico made a request in December 2009 for certain email records from the City. An estimate of 12.5 hours at a rate of $95.75/hour, totaling $1,196.88 was returned. The $95.75 rate raised questions and Oregon Politico investigated.

When asked how the $95.75 rate was set, the City indicated that it was an average rate that was charged to recover the actual cost of the Bureau of Technology Services. Under city code 5.48.030 it was discovered that of the $95.75/hour rate, 60.22% is attributed to direct cost (salary and benefits) and 39.78% to indirect cost. Using this calculation method, the average cost of the Bureau of Technology Services (BTS) per employee is $119,934 for direct costs and $79,226 for indirect costs.

New Rate Policy

For several months Oregon Politico pressed the City to produce documentation of how the rate was derived, but nothing was ever produced. Oregon Politico appealed to the City to reset the rates because the rate did not reflect the “actual cost” of the request, arguing that it instead represented an average, not the cost of the actual employee completing the request.

The City agreed with Oregon Politico and revised its fee policy; it instead would charge the actual cost of the actual employee. The quote for the records request was subsequently updated to hourly rates of $77.73 and $68.08. That means that the employees pulling email records receive $97,363 to $85,275 a year for salary and benefits, and cost $64,316 to $56,311 in indirect costs.

These new hourly rates, the City claims, are the top of the pay scale for employees that may complete the request. This, therefore, is an accurate reflection of the probable cost of the request, because according to the City employee, it likely will be completed by an underutilized highly paid employee.