The recent statewide newspaper "audit" of various public agencies' compliance with Ohio's Public Records Law was revealing, but told only part of the story. In the interest of adding to public understanding of the issue, the perspective of the recipient of many media requests for public records needs to be heard as well.

The Hamilton County Auditor's office takes a back seat to no one in advancing the cause of public record availability. The vital role of a vigorous press in a free society is readily acknowledged. Genuine journalism keeps citizens informed and helps to uncover and prevent corruption.

It is perfectly appropriate to request a public record and receive it in a reasonable period of time. It is a whole other matter to attempt to pressure public officials into creating new public records through customized research and computer programming that relieves a media enterprise of its costs of labor, replacing it with the taxpayers'. The attempted conversion of public resources to private use is disturbing.

It is fine to ask for a public record. It is another story to never pick it up, refuse to pay for it, or attempt to bully a public employee into releasing the record without payment. It is arguably good to test compliance, but if that means you contrive fictitious requests and have scores of public employees fulfill them for your "audit," that seems a little suspect. And if you purposely misrepresent who you are (even though you do not have to say who you are in the first place) that is a problem as well.

One helpful development from the recent media coverage of itself might be to amend state law so that a written request is required for a public record. This simple step allows agencies to more accurately understand the request and it makes costly "fishing expeditions" less likely. Also, if you know the requestor's identity you can more easily contact them for questions or clarifications of the request. It also assists the taxpayer funded agency in measuring its compliance with the law.

As the elected official charged with the responsibility for maintaining a veritable treasure trove of public records, I can assure you that our errors made in this process are usually on the side of openness. However, in this era of identity theft and stalking there is often great tension between the twin pillars of access to public records and the right to privacy. Citizens in our democracy want both and Ohio's public records law must reflect that balance.

Hopefully, these thoughts help bring needed attention to this topic in a way that respects taxpayers' interests as well as that of the media enterprises that so often seek our help. Just as those of us in government need to respect our role and not abuse our power as guardians of public records, the media needs to not abuse its public trust in the pursuit of its interests.

Dusty Rhodes, Hamilton County Auditor

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Editor's note: The records requested in the audit were not voluminous. While reporters did not volunteer the information that they were with the media, they were under strict instructions not to deny it or otherwise misrepresent themselves.