COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — People seeking copies of police and prison videos in Ohio may have to pay up to $75 an hour if Gov. Mike DeWine signs a measure approved by the state legislature this week.
The fee was included in a change to the state’s sunshine laws that was quietly introduced and passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature after midnight Thursday. It now ends up on the Republican governor’s desk. It is not clear when or if he will respond. A news media group is calling for a veto.
Advocates of the First Amendment and government transparency said they were caught off guard by the measure, which would allow state and local law enforcement agencies to charge citizens for copies of records that most agencies now provide for free or at low cost make available.
Each state and local department or agency could set its own fee of up to $75 an hour for videos produced by body cameras, dashboard cameras and surveillance cameras in prisons. You could continue to make these public records available for free. Fees would be capped at $750 per request for each department involved.
Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union in Ohio, said the bill is a “serious blow to government transparency and accountability.” Daniels and Monica Nieporte, executive director of the Ohio News Media Association, each said they had no indication that lawmakers had even considered such a measure until it had already passed. She said her organization would urge DeWine to veto it.
Attorney General Dave Yost said the bill is a “robust path” to address what he called an “expensive, labor-intensive process.”
Yost said social media influencers and professional YouTube creators overwhelmed police departments with requests for these videos and “tricked taxpayers into subsidizing their small garden businesses.”
Critics say the cost of requesting video footage could become prohibitive for law enforcement and media organizations that want to learn more about policing in general or in specific cases, particularly when multiple officers or multiple agencies respond to a crime scene.
The bill would challenge a decades-old state court ruling that allows public agencies to charge people searching for public records only the cost of the item onto which the records were copied, such as paper or a flash drive.
