Commonwealth of Massachusetts STATE ETHICS COMMISSION One Ashburton Place - Room 619 Boston, Massachusetts 02108 Hon. Barbara A. Dortch?Okara (ret.) Chair Karen L. Nober Executive Director April 30, 2015 Todd Wallack Reporter Boston Globe todd.wallack@ globecom Dear Mr. Wallack: This is in response to your email request on March 18, 2015, to David Giannotti of this of?ce for an estimate of the cost of complying with a public records request by the Boston Globe (?Globe?) for all Statements of Financial Interests Is?) ?led with this of?ce for calendar year 2014. Speci?cally, Mr. Giannotti had previously provided you, on March 18, 2015, with a list of all persons required to ?le for calendar year 2014, and you asked ?How much would it cost if the Globe wanted to view all 3,800 ?lings?? You also asked, on April 23, 2015, ?how long it would take to provide the documents (if we paid the fee)?? Before providing the requested estimates, there is some background information relevant to your inquiries that you may ?nd useful. First, the timing of ?ling requirements for SF Is for persons required to ?le are similar to federal tax requirements: one ?les in the spring for the previous calendar year. Appointed state and county ?lers have a deadline of May 1, 2015, while elected of?cials have a deadline of May 26, 2015. As these deadlines have not yet passed, we do not yet have all the SFIs timely ?led for calendar year 2014, and will not until the end of May. Second, While the statute that requires ?ling of SFls, G.L. c. 268B, 3 and 5, requires the Commission to make them available for public inspection, it also directs the Commission to exempt home addresses from public disclosure. The Commission is also subject to the Public Records Law, G.L. c. 4, 7(26)(o) and which requires the Commission to exempt from disclosure home addresses and home telephone numbers of certain public employees, as well as names, home addresses, and home telephone numbers of state employees? family members. The Commission understands these requirements to extend to home email addresses of state employees and their family members, and, also, to the names of trusts that incorporate the names and/or addresses of public employees and their family members. Because SFIs contain home address, telephone number, and personal email information (so that we can contact ?lers), as well as information about ?lers? family members (because the statute requires disclosure of certain family member information), we must redact that information before we can provide SFIs in reSponse to any public record request. Phone: 617-371-9500 or 888-485-4766 Todd Wallack April 30, 2015 Currently, our process for redaction is a manual one: one of our employees reviews each SFI and redacts the information required to be protected, and another employee reviews the redactions to make sure that no protected information will be released. As you may imagine, this is a time-consuming process, which affects our ability to respond quickly to public records requests for SFIs, especially when numerous SFIs are requested. We regret these delays and agree that they are inconsistent with the statutory goal of making SFI information (to the extent not protected) available to the public in a timely way. We are working to eliminate these delays by procuring a new electronic SFI ?ling application, which, we expect, will largely, if not completely, eliminate the necessity for manual redaction, and enable us to redact protected information from SFIs using an automated system. The procurement process is ongoing, and our goal is to have the new system available for ?lings for calendar year 2015, which means that, if you make this same request next year, we hope to be able to respond to it much faster and at a signi?cantly lower cost. At present, however, we have to comply with your request using manual processes. As noted, because the deadlines for ?ling calendar year 2014 SFIs have not yet passed, we have not yet received all those SFIs. For purposes of responding to your request for a cost estimate, I have therefore made certain assumptions, as noted below. The list of required ?lers we gave you had 3,803 ?lers. I have used the ?gure of 3,803 for purposes of arriving at the requested estimate, and that number was accurate as of the date we gave it to you, but the ultimate number of ?lers will likely be different, re?ecting new required ?lers beginning employment since the date when we gave you the list. Past experience indicates that approximately 10% of those ?lers will ?le manually on paper rather than electronically). Therefore, for purposes of providing the requested estimate, I have assumed that we will have 3,423 electronic ?lers, and 380 manual ?lers. The amount of time required to redact an SF I varies, depending on whether the SFI was ?led electronically or manually (electronically ?led SF Is are easier to redact), and whether the SFI is complex (meaning, voluminous and including numerous attachments). We estimate that approximately 5% of SFIs are complex and therefore require more time to redact; I have re?ected that fact in the calculation as it relates to electronically ?led SF Is, but have not done so for manually ?led SFIs, because the number would be small. We further estimate that an electronically ?led SFI takes 5 minutes to redact; a manually ?led SF I takes 10 minutes to redact; and a complex SF I takes 15 minutes to redact. Review of redacted SFIs takes an additional 2 minutes per SF I. The hourly rates for the staff members who carry out these processes are $30.24 for the administrative assistant who performs the redactions, and $30.97 for the ?nancial disclosure analyst who reviews the redactions. Redaction of 3,803 SF Is, using the assumptions noted above, will require the following expenditure of time: Todd Wallack April 30, 2015 3,423 simple, electronically ?led SFIs 5 minutes per SFI 17,115 minutes 170 complex, electronically ?led SFIs 15 minutes per SFI 2,550 minutes 380 manually ?led SFIs 10 minutes per SFI 3800 minutes Total minutes 23,465 391 hows $30.24 $11,826.36 cost of staff time for redaction Review of redacted will require the following expenditure of time: 3,803 SFIs 2 minutes per SF I 7,606 minutes 126.7 hours 126.7 hours $30.97 $3,923.90 Total cost: $11,347.56 for cost of staff time to redact the SF13, plus $3,923.90 for cost of staff time to review, for a total cost of $15,750.26. We routinely redact certain frequently-requested SF Is (those of legislators, the Governor and cabinet members, and judges). This process is not yet complete for calendar year 2014, because the ?ling deadlines have not arrived, but, based on past experience, I estimate that this amounts to about 10% of the total SFIs ?led. Because we would do this amount of redaction anyway and even absent your request, I am reducing our cost estimate by 10%, or $1,575.03. Therefore, the estimated cost of producing all SFIs ?led for calendar year 2014 is $14,175.23. The actual cost of producing the SF15 may vary in the event that we proceed to begin preparing the SF Is to produce to you. We will require payment in advance of the estimated fee of $14,175.23, by cashier?s check made payable to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, if we are to proceed with ful?lling your request. We recognize that this is a signi?cant cost estimate, and, as noted above, are actively working to address this issue with the new system we are procuring. In light of that, you may wish to revise your request this year, and wait until next year to submit a more comprehensive request. You also asked how long it would take to provide the documents. We have a very small staff, and our expectation is that, when the SFI ?ling season is complete at the end of May, SFI staff will focus most of their time on the procurement of a new electronic ?ling system as described above. Consequently, there are no staff members whom we could devote full-time to ful?lling your request. While I cannot give you a de?nite estimate, it would probably take us a number of months to ful?ll your request. Todd Wallack April 30, 2015 Feel free to contact me, at (617) 371-9509, if you have any questions. Very truly yours, bw? Deirdre Roney General Counsel