Fort Worth Weekly has a great piece this week by Dan McGraw on how local governments are repeatedly punting open records requests to the state attorney general's office, taking up everyone's time and money -- and effectively delaying the public in getting access to information.

He brings up the subject because the city of Fort Worth is looking at spending an additional $250,000 to double the number of city staffers and lawyers who process public records requests:

Staffers say the additional people are needed to process an increasing number of open-records requests, which have jumped from about 550 per year in 2000 to an expected 6,000 this year - a 1200 percent increase in a decade. State law requires that agencies respond to requests within a specific time period.

However, others, especially local journalists, see the increase as being largely a product of the city's own policies on handling records requests -- and fear that the new personnel will actually slow the process rather than speeding it up. An extra layer of bureaucracy has been added to the process in recent years with a requirement that almost all requests go through the city secretary's office before being passed along to individual departments. More lawyers could mean even more delays.

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