Township officials tell committee serial public-records requests are crippling small governments

Township trustees and county officials told the House Judiciary Committee that a small number of repeated public-records requesters have created an operational crisis in some small local governments, tying up staff hours and prompting resignations.

Chuck Johnson, a Medina Township trustee, said serial requests arrive in volume and often ask for large historical packets and metadata; he called the pattern a ‘‘weaponization’’ of the Public Records Act that small townships cannot absorb. Bruce Christopher, another Medina trustee, displayed binders of requests from individual requesters and said some single requesters have generated dozens of heavily detailed requests over multiple years.

Doug Eastwood, a trustee, said his township received about 862 record requests since early 2023 — many from three individuals — and that complying consumed staff time and could force conversion of part-time employees to full-time status. Witnesses suggested a range of fixes discussed in committee: clearer statutory standards for vexatious requests, an objective fee for staff time for non-police records, and narrower exceptions for clear bad actors while preserving journalists’ access.

Committee members cautioned about narrowly defined exceptions that could be abused to deny legitimate requests and raised the possibility of charging for staff time as a more objective deterrent. Witnesses welcomed recent limited authority to charge for police-record video processing but said non-police offices lack equivalent tools.

The committee heard multiple in-person witnesses and numerous written testimonies and closed the hearing with no immediate committee action.