Columbus Dispatch
Counties, cities failing to obey public-records law, Yost says
By Randy Ludlow
Thursday September 12, 2013

Ohio’s local governments need to pick up their game when it comes to keeping the people’s records and fulfilling public-records requests, state Auditor Dave Yost says.

A sampling of 20 counties and cities for compliance with Sunshine laws found weaknesses in the public-records policies and procedures in eight, or 40 percent, according to results to be released by the auditor’s office today.

“It’s disappointing in this day and age, with all the attention on transparency, that we don’t do enough to make sure the people’s records are accessible,” Yost said in a statement. “We’ve just got to do better.”

Yost announced the public-records audit during Sunshine Week in March, then asked his staff during its normal financial audits to examine how well some local governments handled records requests.

Auditors found no problems in five counties and seven cities (including Marysville, the only central Ohio government in the audit). But they cited three counties and five cities for not following either state laws or best practices.

The most-common problem, found in Allen County, Beavercreek, Bowling Green, Crawford County, Harrison and Portsmouth, was a lack of formal procedures to track public-records requests. Some did not track when requests were received or fulfilled, the auditor’s office found.

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