Do not miss Ryan Ozawa’s description of his ongoing quest to replicate the Civil Beat request for information about state employees’salaries.

In a long blog entry yesterday, Ozawa describes the state Department of Human Resources Development denial of his request for the same data obtained by Civil Beat.

He was informed of the decision in a phone call from director Marie Laderta.

According to Ozawa, Laderta based her denial on a couple of points. Interestingly, she apparently did not deny that names of public employees and their salaries are legally public information.

However, Laderta asserted:

1) The department did not maintain any copy of the pdf file it provided to Civil Beat. This is extremely difficult to believe, and demands a fuller explanation.

2) Laderta said Ozawa’s request was “denied because of the onerous ‘compilation”’component. Basically, the amount of work it would take to put together all the data was excessive.”

Ozawa does not indicate whether Laderta provided any additional information about what aspects of the Civil Beat request proved most “onerous” to comply with.

State law requires the following information about public employees to be available for inspection [Chapter 92F-12(14)]:

14) The name, compensation (but only the salary range for employees covered by or included in chapter 76, and sections 302A-602 to 302A-640, and 302A-701, or bargaining unit (8)), job title, business address, business telephone number, job description, education and training background, previous work experience, dates of first and last employment, position number, type of appointment, service computation date, occupational group or class code, bargaining unit code, employing agency name and code, department, division, branch, office, section, unit, and island of employment, of present or former officers or employees of the agency; provided that this paragraph shall not require the creation of a roster of employees; and provided further that this paragraph shall not apply to information regarding present or former employees involved in an undercover capacity in a law enforcement agency;

But 92F-11(c) provides:

(c) Unless the information is readily retrievable by the agency in the form in which it is requested, an agency shall not be required to prepare a compilation or summary of its records.

So perhaps the problem is with the structure of the original request, and what’s needed is a more intimate familiarity with the state’s personnel computer system and how files are maintained.

Producing the state’s payroll twice a month requires manipulation of exactly the data that is being sought, along with other more private data not included in the request.

Asking for information that does not require “onerous” compilation in order to extract the relevant data is the key, it seems to me.

Oh, and going back to further interrogate the assertion that the department kept no record of its reply to Civil Beat.