Former Bexar County employee Joseph Brantley at his home in Universal City in November. Brantley has flooded Bexar County with records requests. The county needs to honor them.
Clint Datchuk
What do you do with a problem like Joseph Brantley?
The short answer is Bexar County should honor his public records requests.
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Since July, Brantley has overwhelmed Bexar County with about 1,000 public records requests, showing how one person can clog a system meant to serve all.
As Express-News reporter Saul Pink recently outlined, the county has declared Brantley a “zealous requestor,” a label that allows the county to charge for the time it takes to process such requests.
The “zealous requestor” designation applies to anyone who submits more than 15 open records requests in a month, or 36 such requests in a year. Once staff spend 36 hours processing these requests, with no more than 15 hours in a month, the county can begin charging. As Pink reported, Brantley is the only person to receive such a designation.
To get around these charges and limits, Brantley has at times relied on the alias “Audie Kyle” to file requests and argued he is a journalist, which would make him exempt from the zealous requestor law.
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It hasn’t worked. One request for budget documents filed by “Audie Kyle” resulted in an estimated cost of $15,000. All of this — the use of an alias, the overburdensome policy, the dollar amount — is absurd.
Public records belong to all, and the county should honor Brantley’s (many) requests. His motivations for filing these requests as a former county employee and the related debate over whether he qualifies as a journalist through his Facebook page, Citizen Veteran Journalists of Bexar County, are beside the point. So is what he writes on his Facebook page.
He is a member of the public. He has filed (many) public records requests. Those requests should be processed and honored. The records belong to the public, not the county.
Is Brantley a journalist?
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This question matters in Brantley’s fight with county officials over the costs associated with his (many) public records requests. It does not matter to us. As Chip Stewart, a media law attorney and professor at Texas Christian University, told Pink: “Somebody who is doing journalism activities is a journalist.”
Filing records requests is certainly part of producing journalism. So, too, is reporting, writing, editing, copy editing, acting in an honest manner and fact-checking. Where Brantley fits in that balance is open to debate — Where does podcaster Joe Rogan fit in that media landscape? — but we should all be uncomfortable with the government deciding who qualifies as a journalist.
Besides, journalists don’t have more of a right to public records than members of the public.
While we believe Brantley’s requests should be processed with reasonable speed and minimum cost — $15,000 is an obvious barrier to public disclosure — that does not mean we are blind to the broader issues at play.
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In filing so many requests in such a short period of time, Brantley is stressing the system to the breaking point. The public records system is about serving everyone, not just one person. Filing so many requests has the potential to delay records requests from other people and puts a tremendous strain on staff. It could result in less disclosure — because he has clogged the public records pipes, so to speak.
So, while the county has a responsibility to honor these requests — because it is honoring the public — let’s not confuse Brantley as a champion of the public’s right to know. He is a former county employee who has taken a system meant to serve the public good and used it for selfish reasons.
Nevertheless, the public records he has requested belong to the public.
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