In the past week, news broke that different press outlets were charged differing amounts of money to access public records associated with the inspection and closure of the Washington Bridge.

Thankfully, Governor Dan McKee made the correct decision to quickly order the Rhode Island Department of Transportation to refund these outlets for the documents they rightfully requested on behalf of the public; whose tax dollars fund every position held by DOT, and whose tax dollars will be picking up the tab for whatever remediation method becomes required in the coming months (and maybe years) for the resolution to the bridge’s calamitous condition.

Being able to access records kept by publicly-funded government agencies is not a “nice to have” feature of a functioning democracy; it is part of the bedrock that keeps our government accountable to the people who they are charged with serving every day.

The argument that different press outlets requested different swaths of records — some more easily obtainable, some more voluminous and arduous to produce — does not cut it, in our view. While the current Access to Public Records Act (APRA) certainly declares that a public agency is within their rights to charge citizens and news outlets a price for the time spent gathering documents (and redacting pieces that aren’t subject to the law), when different outlets are charged differing amounts, it creates a troubling image of inequity that damages the public trust in one of our most crucial elements of democracy.

This recent incident, while it was handled in a prompt and reasonable manner by Gov. McKee, shows how important it is to take a look at the APRA as a piece of legislation, and tighten up some areas where it can be improved.

For one, if we are going to continue the practice of charging for access to public records, the law should have a well-defined set of criteria to determine when a request will incur fees, and a formula associated with it to determine how much that fee will be.

For example, “X number of pages equals Y amount of money”, or “X amount of hours spent gathering the records (which should also be logged by the agency producing the record), equals Y amount of money”. There should also be a hard cap to how much a records request can cost, as no public citizen or media outlet should be forced to pay what amounts to more than a week of wages for a journalist simply by doing their job.

Of course, this could be simplified further by doing away with charging fees for accessing records in the first place. Why, exactly, should members of the public (and journalists working on behalf of the public), pay to access records that are legally allowable for them to view in the first place?

Many government agencies in our own coverage area don’t charge for accessing records, and we applaud that effort, as it is in the spirit of keeping government accountable and transparent. How about we make that the new normal?