In early December 2019, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) published a report detailing public records request data from 2018. This report represents the first full year of data collected by the organization (six months of data was collected in 2017).
The report includes information from 57 cities and towns. While some variance and inconsistencies exist in the data, the numbers show that cities are dedicating significant resources to manage a large number of public records requests.
In 2018, the 57 reporting cities logged a total of 120,654 public records requests.
In 2018, the 57 reporting cities logged a total of 120,654 public records requests.
- This averaged out to about 2,117 requests per reporting city, with a median of 1,202 requests.
- Seattle reported the highest number of requests at 13,218.
Reporting cities estimated that staff spent a total of 291,114 hours responding to requests in 2018.
- This averaged out to almost 2.5 hours per request.
- Cities spent a reported $33,334,227 to manage their public records programs.
- Two-thirds of those costs were categorized as staff time.
JLARC has presented several options for viewing the data: