If government officials are stonewalling your open-records request, Auditor Dave Yost wants to help.
Yost’s office announced it will now conduct “sunshine audits” of any public entity in the state to check for violations of the Ohio Public Records Act.
If errors are found, the auditor will send the public entity a noncompliance citation, which Yost said often motivates the entity to issue the records out of fear that it would lose in court.
Any Ohio resident or organization can ask for such an audit, though if it doesn’t involve a state agency, complainants must first try to resolve their disputes through the Ohio Attorney General’s mediation process.
Sunshine audit requests can be submitted via the auditor’s website, by email, by calling (800) 282-0370, or sending a letter to the auditor’s office at 88 E. Broad Street, Columbus, OH 43215.
In an interview, Yost, a former newspaper reporter with the now defunct Columbus Citizen-Journal, said “sunshine audits” are intended to resolve public-records disputes without going to court.
“Filing a civil lawsuit is stupidly expensive, and it’s out of the reach of most average citizens” as well as even many news organizations, Yost said.
The Republican said he wasn’t aware of any other state with a similar initiative.
Yost said that his staff wouldn’t audit any public-records requests involving the auditor’s office itself.
Dennis Hetzel, executive director of the Ohio Newspaper Association, said Yost’s initiative is “a very positive step forward” in a state that has no functional appeals process for open-records denials besides filing a lawsuit.
Hetzel said he wouldn’t be surprised to see a couple hundred audit requests filed with Yost’s office every year, depending on how aware the public is of the option.
Click here to read more of this story.
About Marion Online News
