State Records Committee Appeal Decision 24-22

BEFORE THE STATE RECORDS COMMITTEE OF THE STATE OF UTAH 

LOGAN CITY, Petitioner, v.

BRADY EAMES, Respondent,

AMENDED DECISION AND ORDER[1] 

Case No. 24-22

By this petition, Logan City (“Petitioner”) seeks a formal order declaring Brady Eames (“Respondent”) a vexatious requester for a 12-month period. 

ISSUES FOR REVIEW

    We must determine whether Respondent is a vexatious requester under Section 63G-2-209, and, if so, the proper amount of time which Petitioner may be relieved from responding to Petitioner’s record requests.

STATEMENT OF REASONS FOR DECISION

    Utah Code § 63G-2-209 grants the Utah State Records Committee (“Committee”) the authority to declare an individual a “vexatious requester” and grant relieve a governmental entity from having to respond to the individual’s record requests for a period of time that may not to exceed one year. Utah Code § 63G-2-209(8)(b). In determining whether an individual is a vexatious requester, this Committee must consider the following factors as prescribed by statute:
(a)    the interests described in Section 63G-2-102;
(b)    as applicable:
(i)    the number of requests the individual has submitted to the governmental entity, including the number of pending requests;
(ii)    the scope, nature, content, language, and subject matter of record requests the individual has submitted to the governmental entity; 
(iii)    the nature, content, language, and subject matter of any communications to the governmental entity related to a record request;
(iv)    any pattern of conduct that the Committee determines to constitute:
(A)    an abuse of the right of access to information under GRAMA; or
(B)    substantial interference with the governmental entity’s operations; and
(c)    any other factor the Committee considers relevant.

Utah Code § 63G-2-209(9)(a)-(c). When we examine these factors, we keep in mind that the governmental entity need not prove each individual factor. Rather, the evidentiary burden on the government is to prove through a totality of the circumstances that the individual is a vexatious requester. Utah Administrative Rule R35-1-3(2). This means that we focus on the factors listed in Subsection 209(9) in the aggregate. Thus, we look at each of the statutory factors individually but consider them overall in light of the relevant facts and circumstances giving rise to the petition before us. 

I.    The Interests Described in 63G-2-102

The interests outlined in Section 102 are an individual’s right to access information concerning the public business, and the government’s interest in being allowed to restrict access to certain records under the provisions of GRAMA. Utah Code § 63G-2-107(1)-(2). While GRAMA offers numerous protective policies under which a governmental entity may restrict access, the legislature also allowed the entity to restrict access in the form of assessing a reasonable fee for records. This was addressed directly in Rathmann v. Board of Dirs. Of Davenport Comm. Sch., 580 N.W.2d 773, 778 n.5 & 778-90 (Iowa 1998) where the Court said, “We recognize that permitting [public] entities . . . to charge members of the public a fee to cover the cost of retrieving public records does, to some extent, limit public access to public records.” (quoted by Graham v. Davis County Solid Waste Mgm’t and Energy Recovery Special Service Dist., 1999 UT App 136, ¶25. Thus, in essence, it’s clear that GRAMA attempts to balance the competing rights of both the public and the government.
In essence, the interests outlined in Section 102 are the requester’s right of access to information concerning the conduct of the public’s business, and the public policy interest in allowing the government to restrict access to certain records. Utah Code § 63G-2-107(1)-(2). In other words, “[i]n enacting GRAMA, our Legislature has balanced the public’s right to access government documents against the government’s interest in operating free from unreasonable and burdensome records requests.” Graham v. Davis County Solid Waste Mgm’t and Energy Recovery Special Service Dist., 1999 UT App 136, ¶22. With these interests in mind, we look at how they bear on the case before us.

Respondent has been responding to Petitioner’s voluminous requests since approximately 2016, totaling over 500 requests. At times, the requests have veered away from the public records listed under Section 63G-2-301 and intruded into personal records that Respondent doesn’t maintain. For instance, on March 9, 2022, Petitioner requested personal documentation from Respondent’s attorney, Mohamed Abdullahi. When that request was denied, Petitioner continued to email Mr. Abdullahi directly numerous times, questioning his ability to participate in a mediation between Petitioner and Respondent, his ability to practice law, and payment of his licensing fees. Petitioner copied dozens of individuals across the state in these emails, including the personnel from the Utah courts, the Attorney General’s Office, and private law firms. 

In 2023 alone, Respondent filed over 100 record requests with Petitioner. In the year to date, he has filed nearly 20. Petitioner testified that 90% of all GRAMA requests are from Respondent. This disproportionate number of requests creates an administrative bottleneck in filling the requests, not just for Respondent but also for other citizens who’ve filed a request. The bottleneck is made worse when he files multiple requests within a short period of time. For instance, there have been times when Respondent filed requests for upward of 35-40 records within two days of each other. Naturally, such a large number of requests creates a serious hardship on Petitioner in responding because GRAMA requires governmental entities to respond to record requests within 10 business days. Additionally, because most of the requests are for records concerning different departments within the city government, multiple staff members must put their work aside to aid in retrieving the records. As Petitioner’s Finance Director stated in his sworn affidavit, on one particular occasion, just responding to Respondent’s March 19, 2023, request took one hour to do, which he was not charged for.

    From the evidence presented to us, we find that Respondent’s requests create a burden that encumbers Petitioner’s ability to handle record requests efficiently.

II.    Scope and Nature of the Requests

The next factor we are to consider is the scope and nature of the requests. In addition to the volume of requests, each of Petitioner’s requests are unnecessarily difficult to read and decipher. Rather than simply and succinctly describing the records he seeks, Respondent fills his request with acronyms and definitions, bold and italicized font, multiple subparts that contain additional requests along with irrelevant bases for the request, and statutory references. Additionally, each subpart typically requests records held by a different department within the city. This, of course, necessitates several conversations and coordination efforts among numerous people to decipher, process, and fill the request. For example, on May 10, 2023, Respondent sent a single GRAMA request to Petitioner. However, the first subpart of his request included information from seven different cities, Utah State University, and three multi-million dollar bonds. The third subpart sought information on the same seven cities, the university, and information regarding labor, insurance, supplies, equipment, and repairs regarding Petitioner’s wastewater treatment plant. The request required coordination with the different entities and departments.

In another example, in his September 12, 2023, request, Respondent submitted two separate requests. The first asked for records belonging to the City Treasurer. That particular request consisted of five parts with parts three and five including four subparts. The second request was for information held by Respondent’s Risk Manager. In parts nine and ten of that request, he requested information held by the City Treasurer. Thus, embedded in these two GRAMA requests were over twenty individual record requests across multiple departments within the city government.

If his request is denied, Petitioner’s appeal becomes even more convoluted and complex to decipher as his email not only includes the email thread history from the initial request, but in addition to the jumbled boldened and italicized text, he inserts new subparts in the appeal, which, at times, include immaterial allegations of misconduct. The additional length and difficulty to read creates an additional time burden on the chief administrative officer in figuring out what exactly is being appealed.

How Respondent structures and formats his requests is concerning to us, especially in light of the voluminous requests he sends. Respondent may be attempting to be formal and legalistic in his drafting, but his execution of that intention is repugnant to GRAMA’s policies and the time of the staff who must process the requests. The legislature’s intent behind GRAMA was to “promote the public’s right of easy and reasonable access to unrestricted public records.” Utah Code § 63G-2-102(3)(a). But Respondent’s practice of submitting esoteric and convoluted record requests creates unnecessary difficulty in obtaining the records. Simply put, Respondent is standing in his own way. Because of his wordy labyrinthine requests, he is making access to records difficult and unreasonable because Petitioner’s employees must spend inordinate amounts of time trying to decode each request before receiving another. We believe that Petitioner would be more efficient and timely in responding to requests if staff didn’t have to filter through a dozen acronyms and their associated definitions, several subparts, different headings, included links and references, direct and indirect allegations, and irrelevant superfluous language just to understand what is being requested. 

From the evidence presented to us, we find that the nature of Respondent’s requests are unnecessarily confusing and cumbersome and result in significant time lost for Petitioner’s staff.

III.    Scope, Nature, and Language in Communications Between the Parties

Petitioner showed that Respondent has a history of resorting to personal attacks and accusations against Respondent’s staff. For example, on March 9, 2022, Respondent sought Mr. Abdullahi’s sworn oath form, job qualifications, resume, date of employment, and “any documentation” showing Mayor Daines appointed Mr. Abdullahi as a “training attorney.” Respondent provided Mr. Abdullahi’s law graduate certificate, resume, internship agreement, and university externship agreement. After that, Respondent sent an email to Respondent and twenty-one other individuals asserting that Mr. Abdullahi was not yet a member of the Utah State Bar. From there, Respondent sought additional records related to Mr. Abdullahi, including payroll records and again voiced concern to all individuals he copied on his email that Mr. Abdullahi was acting as an attorney when not under oath. But that was not enough for Respondent. Over a year later, on May 15, 2023, Respondent raised the issue again in another group email.

In another instance, once Respondent replied to Petitioner’s September 12, 2023, request informing him that it would assess a $75.00 fee for the records, Respondent came back accusing the Logan City Recorder of extortion and violation of his Constitutional rights. These accusations continued throughout the pendency of his appeal and were even voiced during the hearing with this Committee. See Eames v. Logan City, Decision and Order no. 2024-41, Utah State Records Committee (entered April 1, 2024).

These examples and the affidavits supporting them show that Respondent resorts to personal attacks and accusations when he doesn’t get his way. The obsessive fixation on particular individuals is not only out of step with GRAMA, but it is alarming and potentially dangerous. This Committee finds no justification behind Respondent locking on to individual employees and relentlessly harassing them with a bombardment of group emails in which dozens of people from across the state are copied. We find that the evidence supports the fact that Respondent’s communications with Respondent’s employees is indeed uncivilized and deserving of reproach.

IV.    Pattern of Behavior

The evidence supports that the issues above are not isolated instances. Rather, Respondent engages in such behavior regularly. We find that because of the regular behavior discussed above, Respondent does engage in a pattern of conduct that abuses the right of access to information and substantially interferes with Respondent’s operations.

V.    Other Relevant Factors

Subsection 63G-2-209(9)(a)-(c) allows the Committee to examine any other factors it deems relevant in deciding whether Respondent is a vexatious requester. We take notice that Respondent was declared a vexatious requester in Office of the Utah State Treasurer v. Eames, Decision and Order no. 2023-60, Utah State Records Committee (entered Nov. 28, 2023). In that case, many of the same patterns of behavior were present as the one before us. We ruled that Respondent was a vexatious requester and ordered that the State Treasurer was relieved from responding to any of Respondent’s record requests for 7 months. One particular issue in that case that is highly related to the situation here was Petitioner’s continual and constant challenges to the State Treasurer’s authority to charge a fee for a record request. In a number of cases that came before us, including Respondent’s own appeals, we explained that the law allows a governmental entity to charge a fee. As a result, Respondent is fully aware that a governmental entity may assess a fee for record requests, especially for voluminous requests which require extraction and conversion to a deliverable format. See Graham, at ¶26 (“An agency may, however, assess fees in conjunction with a record request that involves extracting materials from a larger document or source and compiling them in a different form.”) Nonetheless, despite being fully aware, Respondent continues to file appeals to challenge the fees. Through the many orders this Committee has issued on the subject, Respondent has no excuse to not understand the current state of the law and when a governmental entity may not charge a fee. Consequently, we find it fair to say that many of his appeals over this issue are arguably frivolous. And by continually appealing an issue that has been adjudicated numerous times, Respondent drains Petitioner’s legal resources as its attorneys must divert time and attention away from pressing matters to deal with deadlines and hearings before this Committee. As the totality of the circumstances allows us to look at all factors, including any others that we deem relevant, we find that Petitioner’s continual efforts to adjudicate an issue that the courts and this Committee have clearly ruled on constitutes an ongoing abuse of GRAMA.
 
CONCLUSION

    As stated above, we believe that while Respondent’s intentions to be a government watchdog are noble, he is more of an obstacle procuring the records he seeks than Respondent. His own pattern of behavior has already resulted in an order declaring him vexatious and now a second. Because of the factors and considerations above, we conclude that Respondent is a vexatious requester and that Petitioner is relieved from its legal duty to respond to any of Petitioner’s record requests for a period of 12 months from the date of this Decision and Order. Additionally, to accord with Office of the Utah State Treasurer v. Eames, supra, we make clear that Petitioner’s relief applies also to record requests Respondent has previously filed and are still pending. Thus, Petitioner is relieved from responding to the pending requests Respondent has submitted and Petitioner has not yet answered, processed, or filled.

ORDER

THEREFORE, in accordance with this Decision, the petition is GRANTED. Petitioner has no legal obligation to respond to any record requests submitted by Petitioner for 12 months of this order being entered.

It is so ordered.

RIGHT TO APPEAL

A party to a proceeding before the Committee may seek judicial review in District Court of a Committee's Order by filing a petition for review of the Committee Order as provided in Utah Code § 63G-2-404. Utah Code § 63G-2-403(14). A petition for judicial review of a Committee Order "shall be filed no later than 30 days" after the date of the Committee Order. Utah Code § 63G-2-404(1)(a). The petition for judicial review must be a complaint which is governed by the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure and include the Committee as a necessary party and contain the required information listed in Subsection -404(2). Utah Code § 63G-2-404(1) & (2). The court shall make its decision de novo but shall allow introduction of evidence presented to the Committee, determine all questions of fact and law without a jury, and decide the issue at the earliest practical opportunity. Utah Code § 63G-2-404(6). In order to protect parties’ rights on appeal, a party may wish to seek advice from an attorney.

PENALTY NOTICE

Pursuant to Utah Code § 63G-2-403(15)(c), if the Committee orders the governmental entity to produce a record and no appeal is filed, the government entity herein shall comply with the order of the Committee and shall: (1) Produce the record; and (2) File a notice of compliance with the Committee. If the governmental entity ordered to produce a record fails to file a notice of compliance or a notice of intent to appeal, the Committee may do either or both of the following: (1) Impose a civil penalty of up to $500 for each day of continuing noncompliance; or (2) Send written notice of the entity's noncompliance to the Governor. Utah Code § 63G-2-403(15)(d)(i)(B). In imposing a civil penalty, the Committee shall consider the gravity and circumstances of the violation, including whether the failure to comply was due to neglect or was willful or intentional. Utah Code § 63G-2-403(15)(d)(ii).

Entered this 29 day of April 2024

BY THE STATE RECORDS COMMITTEE

 
Kenneth Williams
Chair, State Records Committee

1. We have modified our original decision to address whether our order applies to record requests pending with Logan City at the time the order was entered. We also corrected a minor non-substantive typographical error.