Credit: YouTube.com/user/StopTeacherStrikes
The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records on Monday denied an appeal Pennsbury School Board member Simon Campbell filed recently.
Campbell was appealing a $1,074.15 charge filed by the Bucks County Board of Assessment after he received a what the county calls and “extensive data set,” which included 11,935 property assessment records for residents in Falls and Tullytown. The records were provided to Campbell by the county in June, officials said.
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According to a county press release, Campbell filed an appeal for the $1,074.15 charge roughly two weeks are receiving the data. The appeal was through the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records.
In his appeal, Campbell, a Lower Makefield resident, argued that Bucks County is barred from “charging fees in excess of $100 without obtaining his approval, requiring him to prepay any fees, or describing the method of calculating the County’s fee,” a press release says.
County officials report they filed their supporting affidavit a few days later.
In its position statement, the County argued that Mr. Campbell was a charged a fee of $0.09 per parcel for property assessment records, and that the fee charged is authorized in accordance with prior final determinations issued by the Office of Open Records that have held that an agency can charge the “reasonable market value” for complex and extensive data sets. The County further stated that Mr. Campbell was aware of the $0.09 per parcel fee.
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According to the decision handed down by the state agency, Campbell “is not being denied records, he is being provided records. Moreover, the agency (Bucks County Open Records Office) has properly applied the fee structure established in the (Right to Know) law. The County is not attempting to charge a fee on appeal that it did not charge in its initial response, as (Mr. Campbell) erroneously suggests.”
The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records released their decision on the appeal on Monday.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Wednesday that Campbell dropped his fight to get right-to-know request seeking payroll data on 80,000 state workers. The newspaper said the data was pertaining to state employee donations to political action committees.
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