Cost and availability of public information in Romania

case study of responses and cost-demands of County Councils to research-related information requests in Romania

Zsolt Burjn-Mosoni

Table of contents

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 3 2. Aspects of the Romanian Public Information Bill .......................................................... 3 3. A case of a petition on Public Information-related costs submitted to the European Parliament ........................................................................................................................... 3 4. Coordinates of the research............................................................................................. 4 I. No response or promise ........................................................................................... 5 II. Denials.................................................................................................................... 5 III. Unconditioned approvals ...................................................................................... 6 IV. Conditioned approvals .......................................................................................... 6 5. The cost of public information........................................................................................ 7 6. Conclusions, suggestions for a possible improvement of the application of the Public Information Bill .................................................................................................................. 9 7. The possibility of taking the research to a comparative level ....................................... 10 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 12 Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 13

1. Introduction
Throughout the world, most democratic and even less democratic states have adopted so-called public information laws or freedom of information acts. First of these was the Freedom of the Press Act of Sweden, first adopted in 1776, which is a part of Sweden's constitution. 1 In the 20th century, many nations enacted specific public information laws, some of which have their roots dating back to the late 18th century, such as James Madison's thoughts about openness in government. 2 After 2000, there was a boom in public information legislation, since then numerous less democratic states have adopted such laws. 3

2. Aspects of the Romanian Public Information Bill

According to the Public Information Bill 4, the access of Romanian citizens to information of public interest is guaranteed. We could easily argue that the expression 'information of public interest' is not an appropriate one, because it allows a wide range of interpretations of what type of information is to be considered 'of public interest' and what type is to be excluded from this category. The letter of the law stipulates that any piece of information that results from the activities undertaken by publicly funded institutions, is of public interest. However, in the same text, article 5, section g.) says that institutions shall publish the list the list of information of public interest. This entitles them to a 'freedom of selection' and, as we experienced during our research, a number of these institutions benefit from the ambiguities of the law, omitting entire categories of information.

3. A case of a petition on Public Information-related costs submitted to the European Parliament

In 2006, a Spanish citizen, Maria Concepcin Hernani Alcade submitted a petition to the European Parliament's Committee on Petitions regarding the application of

1 2

http://www.riksdagen.se/templates/R_Page____6313.aspx For more information, refer to the Unites States Justice Department's page for the Freedom of Information Act: http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/foiastat.htm Besides the FOIA, each state of the USA has its own bills regulating access to public documents. 3 Even regimes like the communist Republic of Moldova (2000) and Mugabe's Zimbabwe (2002) have passed such legislation. 4 544/2001, Legea privind liberul acces la informaiile de interes public, Monitorul Oficial, nr. 663., Partea I., 23. 10. 2001.

a Spanish law 5 transposing the Directive 2003/4/CE. 6, on behalf of Ecologistas en Accin de la Rioja, a Spanish environmental NGO. 7 The petitioner argued that local authorities imposed abusive, unreasonably high costs of sending the requested information, meant to be a discouraging measure which obstructs the citizens in in exercising their right to information. The fee in this case was 90.34 EUR, which as we will present in the next pages, does not even come close to some fees demanded by Romanian local authorities. After declaring the petition admissible, the European Parliament requested information from the Commission. The Commission, after analysing all the circumstances 8 and ending several replies over a one year period, concluded that, despite the provisions of Law 13/2005 concerning public taxes and fees levied in the Comunidad Autnoma de La Rioja is insufficiently clear, its practical implementation does not necessarily mean that Directive 2003/04/EC has been breached. 9 Furthermore, the fee 07/13 por servicios en materia de informacin medioambiental is only required when the administration is obliged to draw up a report with the information available, thus the amount of this fee does not appear unreasonable since it includes only some of the indirect costs and does not appear to be sufficiently high to dissuade people who have a general environmental interest. 10 The Commission thus ruled in favor of the local authorities which levied the fees for sending environmental information, giving a somewhat impugnable argument, that the requested fees are not high enough to be considered abusive. According to this type of logic, citizens with very low incomes or no income at all cannot exercise their right to information. Reversing the idea, people who do not possess the financial means to bear the costs of sending public information, cannot have a general environmental interest. Based on the principle of equity, both of these assumptions are wrong.

4. Coordinates of the research

In 2008, We conducted a research related to the institutional agenda and possible agenda-setting mechanisms within County Councils in Romania. Getting in touch with the institutions under scrutiny and soliciting information based on the Public Information Bill was a prerequisite to the research. These requests generated valuable data regarding

Ley 27/2006, de 18 de julio, por la que se regulan los derechos de acceso a la informacin, de participacin pblica y de acceso a la justicia en materia de medio ambiente (incorpora las Directivas 2003/4/CE y 2003/35/CE) See the entire text: http://www.judicatura.com/legislacion/0765.pdf 6 Official Journal L 41, pp. 26-32. 7 Ecologistas en Accin de La Rioja is part of Ecologistas en Accin, a Spanish environmental organization based in Madrid, which has branches throughout Spain. See http://www.ecologistasenaccion.org/spip.php?rubrique18 8 Detailed costs laid down in the law in question are available in the consolidated text of the petition: 0962/2006. See: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/cm/729/729425/729425 n.pdf 9 Petition 0962/2006, pp. 4. 10 Petition 0962/2006, pp. 5.

the manner in which this type of public institution responds to the demands of the public. The thorough analysis of these data will be presented in the following pages. Between March 27, 2008 and April 26, 2008, we sent out letters to 39 County Councils of Romania, requesting the minute-books of the given county's specialized committees regarding the 2004-2008 mandate. 11 20 of the County Councils (58.9%) replied in some way until May 14, this ratio reached 34 (87.1%) by June 20. According to the Public Information Bill, the institutions must respond within 10 days of a given request if their answer is positive, and 5 days if their answer is negative. Judging by the above percentages we could state that almost half of the County Councils willingly break the law, but the situation is a bit more complicated. The law does not lay down whether the deadlines are expressed in business days or running days, which gives them a certain amount of flexibility. Moreover, they tend to register the requests on a much later date than that of its arrival, and even antedate their responses with a period ranging from a couple of days to almost two weeks. In respect to the means of the response, we can say that around a fourth of the County Councils used more than one method of contacting the petitioner: besides regular mail, on 10 occasions (29.4%), they also communicated their answer by phone, and on 9 occasions (26.4%) by email. The reactions themselves can be divided into four broader categories: no response or promise to send the information; denials; unconditioned approvals; conditioned approvals. The latter category is the one we are particularly interested in, regarding the costs of public information.

I. No response or promise
In 5 cases (14.7%) there was no response at all: Ilfov, Dmbovia, Mehedini,Prahova, and Vaslui county. This percentage, together with the more sofisticated ways of denying access to pulic information tells us that there are severe deficiencies in the relationship of public institutions and citizens. Iai and Brila counties sent 'unconditioned promises', in other words, these institutions responded that the documents will be sent shortly and free of charge, but these never arrived.

II. Denials
1. STRAIGHTFORWARD DENIALS 6 cases; 17.6% a.) 'The requested documents do not come under information of public interest' Arge and Satu Mare county; b.) 'The requested documents can only be provided upon the consent of the presidents of the specialized committees', without further comments Maramure county; c.) The requested documents were classified through the County Council's statutes or an individual resolution Bistria-Nsud and Buzu county;

11

Because the research design laid down that county councils were to be contacted through the contact information found on their websites, we could not send a request to Slaj and Tulcea counties, since these did not mention whether they had specialised committees or not. See the sample text of the request in the appendix.

d.) Allusion to the 'fact' that the requested documents are only used for internal purposes, thus 'they are not included in the institution's archives, but are kept by the secretaries of the specialised committees' Dolj county 2. LATENT DENIALS 12 3 cases; 8.8% a.) 'The requested documents can only be studied at the headquarters of the County Council' Cluj and Sibiu county b.) 'The cost of the duplication of the documents is to be paid at the headquarters of the County Council' Constana county 3. TWO-STEP DENIALS 2 cases; 5.9% a.) 'Due to the volume of the requested information these documents can be provided in 30 days', then a straightforward denial within two weeks Braov county b.) 'Due to the volume of the requested information these documents can be provided in 30 days', then a straightforward denial within two weeks, which had the joint stance of the presidents of the specialised committees Cara-Severin county 13

III. Unconditioned approvals

Six of the contacted County Councils (17.6%) sent an unconditioned approval of the information request, gathered the requested information free of charge and respected the ten-day deadline: a.) On paper, photocopied documents 4 cases; 11.8% Bihor, Botoani, Gorj, Vrancea; b.) The requested documents in digital format, according to the original claim 2 cases; 5.9% - Bacu (through attached files in emails) 14, Covasna county (on a compact disc);

IV. Conditioned approvals

The following County Councils gave a conditioned approval to the information request: Alba, Arad, Clrai, Galai, Giurgiu, Harghita, Ialomia, Mure, Neam, Olt, Suceava, Timi, Vlcea. These sum up 13 cases, respresenting 38.2% of the responses.
12

This category was introduced because County Councils attempted to impose financial burdens on the claimant, other than the cost of the duplication of the documents (travelling, accomodation, etc.) 13 The presidents of the specialised committees were requested to take a stance with the following motivation: Preedintele poate ncuviina ca procesele-verbale ale edinelor s fie consultate de alte persoane interesate care nu au participat la edin, cu excepia proceselor-verbale ntocmite n edinele ale cror lucrri s-au desfurat cu uile nchise. art. 26, alin. 2 din Ordonana Guvernului Romniei nr. 35/2002, modificat i completat de legea nr. 673/2002. The referred resolution regulates the functioning of the so-called Local Councils, a category comprising the lower levels of public administration. In the text of the resolution the term County Council is mentioned once, in article 78.: Prevederile prezentului regulament-cadru vor fi avute n vedere i la elaborarea i adoptarea regulamentelor proprii de ctre consiliile judeene i Consiliul General al Municipiului Bucureti. 14 The documents from Bacu county could not be further analyzed in the study because the quality of the images was very poor, although this fact does not have a direct influence on our present paper.

5. The cost of public information

The aforementioned councils communicated the amount of information they gathered in the period set by the request, and the total costs of sending the hard copies thereof. An interesting fact is that almost all of the institutions sent their payment details (treasury and/or bank account numbers), but Suceava county was willing to send the information on a collect on delivery basis, which could be a method of assuring the petitioner that the information he requested will surely be sent after. The most important findings of the cost research can be found in the table below: NUMBER OF PAGES 750 687 1700 1097 850 604 500 6120* 1581 971

COUNTY Arad Clrai Alba Galai Giurgiu Harghita Ialomia Mure Neam Olt Suceava Timi Vlcea AVERAGE

SUM 450 687 200 268 438.8 425 48.3 336 200 7798* 500 1650 323.59 484.24

PER PAGE 0.6 RON 1 RON 0.16 RON 0.4 RON 0.5 RON 0.08 RON 1 RON 0.27 RON 0.2 RON 0.5 RON

*To avoid distortion, these were not considered in the calculation of the average values.

Table 1. Total costs, number of pages, per page cost of the requested information

The extreme value of Olt county is the result of resolution 108/2007 15, according to which any document request imposes an archive fee of 14 RON per document, in our case there were 557 minutes of the specialised committees. Ialomia county calculated the sum with a per page cost of 8 bani, while Timi county sent a detailed list of the costs, which included a unit price for the copying of the documents on one hand, on the other hand, the list mentioned the price of the paper to be used. Based on the volume of information requested and the price of per-page photocopying on the market (0.06-0.1 RON pp), the only county council with a value close to real costs was Ialomia (0.08 RON pp). Clrai and Suceava counties have an extremely high per page cost (1 RON
15

The resolution is available at: http://www.cjolt.ro/cjolt/gallery/hot-2007/hot-108.pdf Annex no. 2 to this resolution contains the exact price per document: http://www.cjolt.ro/cjolt/gallery/hot2007/anexa-2-hot-108.pdf

pp), with Arad (0.6 RON pp), Harghita (0.5 RON pp), and Giurgiu (0.4 RON pp) in the high area. Alba, Mure, Neam and Olt counties did not disclose the cost of the documents to the petitioner, but we can see that Olt county demanded an enormous sum for the requested information, which at the time corresponded to approximately 2.100 EUR. If these requests were sent in a European Union context, this sum could well be labeled by the European Commission as abusive and as an obstruction for citizens in exercising their right to information. The Public Information Bill compels public institutions to edit and publish a report regarding the claims based on the bill and the outcomes of these at least once a year. These reports comprise the number of claims, their characteristics and the responses given to them. All the available reports state that in a given period of time usually one year citizens did make use of their rights to petition and request public information and that 'the institutions responded to these requests within their competences and possibilities'. Despite the fact that the Public Information Bill has been operative for the last eight years, the communication with citizens interested in some type public information is very ineffective. Moreover, classifying entirely public information is a common phenomenon, even though sometimes this involves an outright breaking of the law. As far as various geographical stereotypes are concerned, we cannot present farreaching conclusions, but the colour-coded map shows a certain domination of the southern part of the country in terms of denials and the overall lack of response. As for the costs of the information, there is absolutely no correlation between geographical areas and high or low costs. The map below shows the geographical distribution of the effects of the request and the costs communicated by the councils.

Figure 1. Distribution of the responses given by County Councils: conditioned approvals, denials, unconditioned approvals, no response, promise to send the documents, counties without request

We can clearly see that there are some clustering tendencies of denials or lack of response: there are denial clusters in the northwestern and the south-central part of the country, the latter has the only concentration of counties which failed to respond to the requests.

6. Conclusions, suggestions for a possible improvement of the application of the Public Information Bill
Our research revealed the major deficiencies of the application of the Public Information Bill and the way in which public institutions of the local level conceive it. Part of these deficiencies are caused by the ambiguities of the law itself, which give these institutions an unwanted freedom of interpretation. On the other hand, a 'perfect', uninterpretable law is useless if public institutions do not have to face any method of coercion in case they turn down legal requests of public information. One could argue that there is an Administrative Court in Romania (Contenciosul Administrativ), but citizens seldom take their cases to the courthouses, given their experiences and perception of a system affected by widespread corruption, and the lengthiness of lawsuits.

Despite our research only covered part of the interaction of public institutions with the public, namely the specific case of requesting information related to the work of one part of the institution in question, we are firmly convinced that a vast majority of the public institutions in Romania are not used to getting too much attention from the public, so much the less are they used to citizens filing complaints against them. Normatively speaking, we need much more than a Public Information Bill in order to facilitate the communication between institutions and citizens, thus bringing the accountability of the representatives to a much higher level than the actual one. First of all, there has to be a certain amount of interest of the citizens related to the work and expenditures of the publicly financed institutions, and judging from the records of the County Councils, this interest is missing in almost all cases. From this point, the discussion could be taken to aspects of policital culture and the quality of the political class, but given the quite narrow framework of this paper, we can dedicate only a few words to these topics. In our view, the condition of interest can only be fulfilled if the political culture in Romania shifts from parochialism to a more participative level, then again this shift can not be done exclusively by the civil society, which is weak itself. The powers to be must promote civic behaviour, which in most of the cases is unwanted, because the less the citizen knows about the administrative process, the less he can complain about, the less those in charge of policies can be held accountable for the way they distribute taxpayer money through different policies and transfers. We do need a law with much clearer provisions than the actual one, which does not let servants or elected representatives decide arbitrarily whether a piece of information is public or not, and provides clearly for the deadline of response. Another issue connected to the Public Information Bill is that of research-related information. The Romanian government nowadays promises more funding for research on a daily basis, but it would be very simple to modify the existing law or even enact a new law that guarantees free access to raw data gathered by a number of government agencies and public institutions, and to stop charging researchers ridiculous sums per piece of data. The chapter about a European case of cost-related petition showed that in other states, there is very detailed provision related to public information even on a regional or local level. Why should it be impossible for Romania to regulate public information costs at least on a national level?

7. The possibility of taking the research to a comparative level

This type of research may be conducted in most of the member states of the European Union, only with higher postage costs of the requests because they have to be internationally registered, which adds a cost of 6 RON/request. The number of administrative divisions of EU member states is similar to that of Romania in some cases (e.g. England has 47 boroughs) and much smaller in others (e.g. Hungary, 19 counties; Slovenia 8 regions, etc.). If we were to develop a hypothesis, we would presume that in case of other EU member states, the costs of the requested information would not have such great a deviation as in the case of Romania, where the standard deviation of the values was

2072,503 (caused mainly but not exclusively by Olt and Timi counties). An exciting comparison would be that of the costs of researching a given topic at a national level for the whole European Union, collating the information cost/income level ratio between the member states.

Bibliography
1. Colombo, Luca Femminis, Gianluca 2008: The social value of public information with costly information acquisition. Economics letters, vol. 100, issue 2, 2008 2. Constitution of Sweden, accessed from http://www.riksdagen.se/templates/R_Page____6313.aspx 3. Freedom of Information Act, accessed from http://www.usdoj.gov/oip/foiastat.htm 4. Legea privind liberul acces la informaiile de interes public, Monitorul Oficial, nr. 663., Partea I., 23. 10. 2001 5. Ley 27/2006, de 18 de julio, por la que se regulan los derechos de acceso a la informacin, de participacin pblica y de acceso a la justicia en materia de medio ambiente (incorpora las Directivas 2003/4/CE y 2003/35/CE) , accessed from http://www.judicatura.com/legislacion/0765.pdf 6. Petition 0962/2006 submitted to the European Parliament, accessed from http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/cm/729/7294 25/729425en.pdf 7. Resolution 108/2007 and annex 2 to the resolution 108/2007 of Olt County Council, accessed from http://www.cjolt.ro/cjolt/gallery/hot-2007/

Appendix
- the format of the request Ctre Consiliul Judeean ... ... Address ... Address Stimate domnule/Stimat doamn! Prin prezenta formulez o cerere conform Legii nr. 544/2001 privind liberul acces la informaiile de interes public. Doresc s primesc o copie n format electronic, de pe urmtoarele documente: procesele-verbale ale edinelor comisiilor de specialitate (1. comisia ...; 2. comisia...; 3. comisia ...; 4. comisia...; 5. comisia... ... ale Consiliului Judeean ... din perioada ianuarie 2004. - martie 2008. Doresc ca informaiile solicitate s mi fie furnizate n format electronic, la urmtoarea adres de e-mail: zsoltburjan@gmail.com n cazul n care aceste documente nu exist n format digital i nu pot fi digitalizate din motive ntemeiate, sunt dispus s pltesc taxele aferente serviciilor de fotocopiere a documentelor solicitate. Menionez c documentele mai sus menionate sunt solicitate n vederea realizrii unui studiu de specialitate n cadrul Facultii de tiine Politice, Administrative i ale Comunicrii de la Universitatea Babe-Bolyai, ClujNapoca. V mulumesc pentru solicitudine, Burjn Zsolt-Gbor str. 21 Decembrie 1989, nr. 75, bloc B, ap. 1 400124, Cluj-Napoca Telefon: 0741 060844

XX. 04. 2008.