Data Practice Law Violations: COMW 2 ½ month (and counting) public data requests journey

After the June 30, 2021 special township meeting on the 3M Settlement Draft CDWP and proposed WLT municipal water system solution, some residents (who would ultimately organize into COMW) decided to explore the possibility of hiring legal representation and seeking injunctive relief in court to slow down the process since what appeared to be the majority of WLT residents position seemed to be going unheard. To this end, on or about 7/19/2021, COMW began the process to request from WLT the following documents and materials:

• Public information packets and unpublished minutes from the Town Board special meetings of 2/27/2020 and 3/5/2020.
• Email communications between Town Board members and Prairie Island Indian Community (PIIC)
• All expenditures/financial reports for all vendors for WLT from January 1, 2020 through July 31, 2020; including all billings from Focus Engineering (Engineer Ryan Stempski) submitted to the WLT town board.

So far, it has taken over 11 email exchanges, multiple voice messages, and 2 ½ months to get the first access to any data at the WLT Town Hall, including the specific data requested. Even then the requested information was incomplete and other data was not available. The details of this back and forth are included in the supplemental MOL in support of COMW’s motion for TRO and TI. This difficulty in obtaining requested public data has uncovered another area of municipal law violations on the part of the WLT Board as it relates to Minnesota data practice laws.

Regarding ease of access to data. These laws prescribe reasonable times and places be provided upon request to make it easy for any person to access government data and data must be disseminated in a “prompt manner”. This has not been the experience of COMW. In addition to the string of communications back and forth, any attempt to simply request information in person during business hours seems impossible. Even after the Town Hall building was purchased in December of 2020, no one ever seems to staff the posted business hours of M-F, 8am-12pm. COMW has affidavits attesting to this fact by nearly daily observation. Also, once some of the data requests finally were fulfilled, COMW learned the requested financial data was prepared and ready by Aug 8, 2021 but withheld until Sept 28, 2021. Finally, regarding justification, citizens do not need to provide any reason to access government data and this improper line of questioning was pursued by Ms. Seifert, the Town Clerk during the back-and-forth data request communications between WLT and COMW.

Regarding policies governing data practices, the law requires municipalities to have two different data practices manuals and update them annually. First, a “Data Practices Policy for Members of the Public” and second, a “Data Subject Rights and Access Policy”. COMW has uncovered that neither of these policy manuals for WLT have been updated since May 9, 2016. Beyond the polices themselves, Minnesota data practice laws require the designation of a person as the “responsible authority” for data practices policy. It seems no person in WLT has this designation or authority. Nor does WLT have a “data compliance official” to handle any complaints or data irregularities. Further, it has been revealed that WLT has not kept or maintained any inventory of the data at the WLT town hall as required. Also, it appears not all WLT records are maintained at the WLT Town Hall (or the previous town office’s location). Rather, it seems official WLT data is being stored on multiple computers and in multiple locations including the homes of the full-time clerk and deputy clerk. Lastly, regarding destruction of key information, the meeting packets for citizens for the special meetings of 2/27/2020 and 3/5/2020 appear to have been destroyed as this data was not able to be provided to COMW as requested.