HELENA – A conservative group from Bozeman said it’s mostly hitting roadblocks in its effort to obtain electronic copies of local government contracts from counties and larger cities.
In early May, Treasure State Network wrote all 56 counties and 51 cities with populations over 1,000 and requested copies of all current government contracts and all no-bid contracts with nongovernment entities that exceeded $1,000. It offered to pay 10 cents per copy and asked for the records to be e-mailed or faxed to a toll-free number.
The network wants to post various government contracts on its Web site for people to evaluate how government agencies are spending their money.
Through Tuesday, 48 counties and 28 cities have sent the network a similar response that says they can obtain the information by coming to the office in person and searching the public documents. Copies would be 50 cents for the first page of a document and 25 cents for additional pages.
The local governments’ responses were largely based on a memo from Michael W. Sehestedt, chief counsel for the Montana Association of Counties. Sehestedt said Wednesday he relied on an attorney general’s opinion and directives given to state agencies in drafting the memo.
“It isn’t that the records aren’t public, it’s that if you want somebody to search them for you and copy them, there are costs to the public associated with that and if you want them for your purposes the public shouldn’t be subsidizing it. That’s the bottom line,” Sehestedt said.
“There’s no problem with them getting the records,” he said. “There’s an issue with what they wanted us to do, which is search, compile and copy.”
The Treasure State Network describes itself as a conservative, limited government, nonprofit, grass roots organization dedicated to conservative values. Its directors include former Reps. Rick Jore, a Constitution Party member from Ronan, and Roger Koopman, a Bozeman Republican, along with Trevis Butcher, a political activist who heads the Lewistown-based Montanans in Action.
“Transparency in government is a wonderful thing, especially in these financial times,” said Bob Adney, the network’s executive director. “It’s very important when we’re looking at taxpayer dollars to be careful about how government dollars are spent.”
Adney said the university system has provided nearly 3,000 contracts or lists of contracts in response to an earlier network request. The Montana State University campus has not responded to the request, Adney said.
This week, Adney followed up his request with another letter asking counties to search their miscellaneous index files, which should contain the contract information. The network sent each local government $5 to cover the cost of the search. From that information, Adney said the network will request specific documents as needed.