Salem council considers video fee for public records
SALEM — The city is considering the implementation of a processing fee for footage included in public records requests from the police department.
During its meeting Tuesday the rules and ordinances committee discussed the recent passage of Ohio House Bill 315, which will permit Ohio law enforcement agencies to charge a fee for the processing and redaction of footage from body cameras, dash cameras, and jail surveillance systems included in public records requests. These fees can be up to $75 per hour for video processing with a maximum total fee of $750 for each request and have been cited by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine as a way to address “unfunded burdens” on law enforcement agencies caused by developing technology.
Councilman Jeff Stockman, who chairs the committee, said that Police Chief J.T. Panezott requested the city adopt an ordinance permitting the department to develop and implement a “formula for a fee system when people ask for bodycam or video footage that must be redacted by them,” as the amount of editing and redaction required for these requests takes hours.
“It takes them hours, and hours, and hours to redact names and faces and things like that off these body cameras that they do. This is something that he said was vital to them so they can at least get back some of the money it costs them to sit in the back room and edit videos … I thought there was no question about it, it would be a good thing for the city and a good thing for them,” said Stockman.
Stockman also stressed that like all fees included in the city fee schedule, the formula would have to be fact-based to cover the costs of the service and was not to make a profit.
“It’s not a money making thing, it’s just to help pay for and offset his costs of doing it,” said Stockman.
The committee voted unanimously to request City Law Director Brooke Zellers draft the ordinance for consideration in the city council’s next meeting, and Zellers said that he agreed with implementing a fee, noting that the department has had issues with previous requests. Zellers also noted that with no fee in place that there were people profiting from bodycam footage at the expense of law enforcement agencies.
“In the past year alone, we’ve had three requests of unbelievable magnitude that have caused the department so much trouble. They don’t have the administrative staff there to handle these things. The discussion previously was about trying to maybe pay somebody to do it but there was no way to fund it but now maybe we can handle that,” said Zellers. “People were making money off our body cams and that’s not right. It’s costing us and they’re getting money.”
The rules and ordinances committee will meet next at 6 p.m. Jan. 21.