COLUMBUS, Ohio – People seeking copies of police and jail videos in Ohio may have to pay up to $750, or $75 for each hour of video released, if Gov. Mike DeWine signs a measure approved by the state Legislature this week.
The fee was included in an amendment to the state’s sunshine laws that was quietly introduced and passed early Thursday by the GOP-controlled Legislature. It now heads to the desk of the Republican governor. It's not clear when or if he'll act on it. A news media group is urging a veto.
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First Amendment and government transparency advocates said they were blindsided by the measure, which would give state and local law enforcement agencies the option to charge people for making copies of records that most departments now provide for free or little cost.
Each state and local department or agency could set their own fee, up to $75 an hour, for videos produced by body cameras, dashboard cameras and surveillance cameras inside jails. They also could continue to provide these public records free of charge. The fees would be capped at $750 per request for each department involved.
Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist at Ohio’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter, called the bill a major blow for government transparency and accountability. Daniels and Monica Nieporte, executive director of the Ohio News Media Association, both said they had no indication lawmakers were even considering such a measure until after it had already passed. Nieporte urged DeWine to veto it.
State Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, said the bill is a “solid way” to approach what he called an “expensive, labor-intensive process.”
Yost said social media influencers and professional YouTube creators have bogged down police departments with requests for these videos, effectively “making the taxpayers subsidize their little garden businesses.”
Critics say the cost of requesting video could become prohibitive for criminal justice watchdogs and media organizations trying to learn more about policing in general or in specific cases, especially if multiple officers or multiple agencies respond to a scene.
The law would challenge a decades-old state court ruling that public agencies could only charge seekers of public records for the costs of the item the record was copied onto, such as paper or a flash drive.