The Peoples’ Records

The Common Pleas Clerk in Portage County denied a Record-Courier reporter access to its files according to a story in the Record Courier on 10-4-2007. Linda Fankhauser, the Clerk of Courts, is apparently reading the new law to allow her to deny access until her office receives training. I like Linda, but I don’t understand her position on this issue. The decision opens the Clerk of Courts to a Public Records mandamus lawsuit. It would be interesting to file it in the Portage County Court of Common Pleas, but I think more prudent to file directly in the Supreme Court. The article is at

Portage court denies access to records

The paper’s editorial is at

Editorial Opinion

Over 100 years ago an Ohio Court got it right:

In England the fountain head of justice is the king. In theory at least the courts are his courts, and the government is his government. Whatever power the people have he has granted to them; and if no grant has been made to them to examine the public records, it may well have been in England that they have no such power.

But in this country we proceed upon an entirely different theory of government. Here the people are the fountain head of justice. The courts are their courts; and the government is their government. Whatever power they have not granted to their officials remains with them . . . .
As public records are but the people’s records it would seem necessarily to follow that unless forbidden by a constitution or statute, the right of the people to examine their own records must remain.
Wells v. Lewis, 12 Ohio N.P. 170, 175-176 (Superior Ct 1901).

The basic philosophy of this site is that a Government not accountable to the public will run amok. Funds will be misspent, bad behavior will be covered up, and cronies will be rewarded. Ohio’s Public Records Statute provides a strong tool for citizen oversight, but it is underused. The statute provides the successful citizen with a chance to recover attorney’s fees spent in pursuit of public records and a $1000.00 penalty for each record destroyed improperly. These incentives led to the $983,000.00 settlement in Kish v. City of Akron in early 2007, a $90,000.00 settlement in Kelley v. Mogadore, and many other smaller settlements statewide.