State offers, union nixes alternate records route
MONTPELIER, Vt.—The Douglas administration extended an olive branch Wednesday to the state workers' union in an ongoing access-to-public-records dispute, but the Vermont State Employees Association said the administration's offer came up short.
The dispute made public this week involves a demand by the state Department of Human Resources that the union pay $1,700 for department staff time to respond to a request for e-mails and other documents related to Gov. Jim Douglas' plan to cut the state work force by 400.
The union and administration officials are at odds over whether Vermont's law allowing agencies to collect for copies of records includes the right to charge for time it takes agency staffers to gather documents, review each one and remove any information that is confidential under law.
Administration Secretary Michael Smith said in an e-mail Wednesday that the union has another route aside from the public records law to get access to the documents: Article 6 of the union's contract with the state says the union is allowed to have information "reasonably necessary to serve the needs of the VSEA."
David Herlihy, commissioner of the Department of Human Resources, wrote to the union in a letter dated Wednesday that deadlines required in the public records law would require some members of his staff to set aside virtually all other work to respond to the union's records request.
That, he said in an interview, was a big motivation for deciding to charge for the staff time devoted to the request.
Instead, he wrote to the union that it should make the request under Article 6.
"In order to resolve the issue of expense for this search, why don’t you present your request under Article 6 of the collective bargaining agreement?" Herlihy wrote. "As you know, we do not have the ability to charge for such requests. Frankly, there is a world of difference for us between responding to an Article 6 request and responding to a public records request. While we would work diligently to respond promptly to an Article 6 request, we would not be subject to the time requirements that would, in essence, force us to set aside all other work."
But the union released a statement rejecting that strategy.
"We would be happy to accommodate a request for an extension of time as permitted by the Public Records Act," it said. "But we choose not to request information under Article 6 of the collective bargaining agreement because that provision does not include any timeframes for a response, and we would not have the enforcement mechanisms afforded us under the Public Records Act."
Union officials said they and legislative committees had been asking for months about the possible impact on state services of the 400 jobs the administration wants to cut by attrition, but have not gotten a satisfactory response from the administration.
"I think that they shouldn't be surprised they're getting this request," said Abigail Doolittle, staff attorney with the VSEA.
She said the union wants to maintain the Public Records Act's timelines as a tool in its efforts to pry information loose, as well as the law's enforcement mechanisms. Those include the ability to sue state agencies in Superior Court, seeking attorneys fees and a court order that the information be released.
