At next week's meeting, the Lafayette City Council will consider introduction of an ordinance that sets public records policies.
The regular council meetings are set for Wednesday, February 15. The Parish Council meeting starts at 4:30 p.m. and the City Council meeting starts at 5:30 p.m.
Two local media outlets sued LCGlast year after the Guillory administration started charging $1 per page to email electronic documents. Although the law provides for citizens to use their own scanners to scan public documents, LCG produced documents in the parish courthouse - where non-attorneys are not allowed to take their cell phones.
The court ruled that the Guillory administration could set fees, as long as they were "reasonable" as required in state law. No government in Louisiana can charge anyone to simply look at documents, and the law requires all governments to produce public documents and give citizens a place to look at them, at no charge.
Recently, KATC Investigates made a public records request to LCG, and although we were offered hard copies for a fee, we declined and asked to see them in person instead. LCG officials produced the documents, in electronic form, on a laptop so that we could look at the documents and scan them using a cell phone app. There was no charge for any of that.
Under the proposed policy, that is how it would work if no copies are desired. If a citizen wants hard copies, they would pay 50 cents per page for the first 50 pages, and $1 per page for all pages after that. Color copies are $1 per page. If the documents exist in electronic form and the citizen asks for electronic copies, they would be emailed to the citizen at no charge, or uploaded to a document sharing site, also at no charge. If the documents exceed 25 MB, they would be transferred to a document storage device, like a USB drive, for a $20 fee.
The policy does not allow LCG document custodians to load documents onto devices provided by the citizen, in order to protect the LCG system from viruses and malware.
There's a separate policy if a citizen wants a map.
Here's the ordinance so you can read it for yourself:
