$26,028.50.
That’s the amount of the payment made this week to APCC pursuant to a settlement agreement between the Massachusetts National Guard and APCC. This payment resolves APCC’s public records case against the Guard. The settlement amount represents a significant portion, but not all, of APCC’s legal costs incurred in our effort to enforce the integrity of the state public records law. More importantly though, the successful use of the law to obtain important public records reaffirms the utility of the public records law as a tool to ensure that the public has proper access to the records the law says we do. It is increasingly the case that the only way to gain insight into the work being done in the public’s name is to rely on the public records law.
The Massachusetts public records law is cumbersome to work with. Recalcitrant agencies can use elements of the law to delay and raise the cost of records recovery beyond the means of many members of the public. It is in this light that APCC used the seldom chosen path to take the Guard to court to seek redress for what we felt was a lack of adherence to the requirements to produce documents covered by the law. We went to court because we felt entitled to documents that were being improperly withheld. More than that, the systemic resistance to compliance with the law compelled us to go beyond administrative procedures to test the limits of the remedies provided in the law.
This decision forced us to expend significant effort and money with no promise of recovery of the cost of the litigation. We acted to ensure that the public records law would be a useful tool to help us obtain the information we needed to protect the Upper Cape Water Supply Reserve. That outcome, the protection of the Upper Cape’s water, was and remains our sole policy objective no matter the rhetorical smears that have suggested otherwise.
Going to court resulted in the delivery of additional public records responsive to our original request, reimbursement of most of our legal fees, and valuable public confirmation that the law has enforcement tools that, while cumbersome and expensive to work with, have the teeth to ensure that which should be public is accessible to the public. It is our hope that agencies will take note and fully respond as required by the law to future public records requests so that we and others do not need to go back to court to enforce the law. But if not, well, they can’t say they were not warned.
