According to the Public Access Ombudsman’s 2023 Report, state-level agencies received nearly three thousand requests under the Maine’s Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) last year. While roughly half of these requests were fulfilled in under five days, about 14 percent took more than two months, with sixteen requests taking more than a year to complete.
FOAA is a government transparency law designed to ensure that Mainers have a “broad right of access to public records” while simultaneously “protecting legitimate governmental interests and the privacy rights of individual citizens.”
This law also guarantees that citizens have access to “meetings of public bodies” in the interest of improving government accountability.
The Public Access Ombudsman — a position housed under the Maine Attorney General’s Office and held by Brenda Kielty since 2012 — is responsible for receiving messages from the public and serving as an “impartial intermediary who provides information, who informally resolves disputes, and encourages full compliance with the spirit and the letter of the law.”
Throughout last year, the ombudsman received a combined 619 inquiries, complaints, and suggestions regarding FOAA, the “bulk” of which were inquiries from “private citizens regarding access to public records held by municipal government agencies.”
Overall, the vast majority of these submissions — 556 of them — were inquiries, while 62 represented complaints. Just one of these submissions was a suggestion.
Of the 488 contacts related to public records, questions most commonly concerned the basis for a denial, confidentiality exceptions, reasonable response times and delay, production or inspection of public records, and the fees and costs for public records.
The 115 contacts concerning public meetings most frequently related to the use of executive session, remote participation and attendance, and what constitutes a meeting in general.
Three hundred and thirty-three messages were submitted by private citizens, 64 from state agencies, 18 from law enforcement agencies, 13 from the Legislature, 48 from members of the media, 75 from municipal officials, 11 from school districts, 1 from the executive branch, and 56 from an assortment of others including attorneys and commercial requesters.
Municipalities were most commonly identified as the focus of these submissions at 143, followed by state agencies at 75, school administrative units at 52, and law enforcement agencies at 41.
In the vast majority of cases, contacts with the ombudsman were resolved with a query being answered. 61 complaints were solved with a facilitated resolution, while 26 were deemed unsubstantiated.
Twenty-six contacts were declined either because “the subject of the dispute was outside the scope of authority of the ombudsman or related to a matter that was the subject of an administrative or judicial proceeding.” No advisory opinions were issued by the ombudsman in 2023.
Of the 2,936 FOAA requests received by state-level agencies last year, nearly half were responded to in five days or less, while an additional quarter were answered in less than a month.
Sixteen requests took more than a year to fulfill, primarily accounted for by those submitted to the Department of Public Safety (DPS), as well as the Department of Corrections, Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, and the Department of Marine Resources (MDMR).
More than $10,000 worth of fees were charged across all state agencies for fulfilling FOAA requests in 2023, covering over three thousand hours worth of work.
Going into 2024, 18 FOAA requests — 15 with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and 3 with the Department of Transportation (MDOT) — were still pending.
At the conclusion of the report, the ombudsman issued two recommendations regarding improvements that could be made to the state’s policies surrounding remote participation in public meetings.
For example, the ombudsman suggested allowing for remote-only meetings to be conducted regardless of whether or not an “emergency or urgent situation” exists, as is currently the case.
The ombudsman also recommended making all meetings hybrid such that members of the public are “always allowed to attend remotely” to the extent that it is technologically feasible to do so.
Every year since 2012, Ms. Kielty’s report has stated, “No advisory opinions were issued by the ombudsman.” Why does she never report how many Advisory Opinions were requested?
According to the statute creating her position, her duties include “5 MRS §200-I (D) Furnish, upon request, advisory opinions regarding the interpretation of and compliance with the State’s freedom of access laws to any person or public agency or official in an expeditious manner. The ombudsman may not issue an advisory opinion concerning a specific matter with respect to which a lawsuit has been filed under Title 1, chapter 13. Advisory opinions must be publicly available after distribution to the requestor and the parties involved; [2013, c. 229, §1(AMD).]”