Somerville Voices blogger Barry
Rafkind filed a request through the city for data on parking tickets,
meters, towing and appeals in August. The Boston Globe later reported
the city responded by asking for $200,000 up front.

Gewirtz said
she wants the city to justify the fees, pointing out at the Oct. 8
Board of Aldermen meeting that Massachusetts law does not address
pricing for electronic records aside from the staff time needed to
redact private data.

"I think it would be important to know what city policy is explicitly," Gewirtz said.

City
Solicitor John Gannon said the figure comes from the amount of data
that a staff member would have to troll through, manually taking out
data deemed private by the state.

Gannon insisted the size of Rafkind's request warranted the fee.

"I've been dealing with public records requests for 20 years," Gannon said. "I've never dealt with one that was 300,000 pages."

Gewirtz
also asked that the city consider creating a revolving fund to help
with public records. Ward 4 Alderman Walter Pero responded that the
state should be paying the bill for what he said appears to be an
"unfunded mandate."

"It's somewhat of a no-win situation for
the city at times," Pero said. "If someone doesn't like that, maybe
they should take those concerns to the legislature."

The city
has taken heat for its public records policies before. The Somerville
Journal appealed the redaction of what it said was public data in 2008.
The State Supervisor of Records sided with the city, although it
determined information on city official's property and names of spouses
was wrongly withheld.

Gewirtz's resolution was approved, and
it's now up to the city to respond with "the exact written procedure
and fee structure" for such requests.