Public Records Officer
Ginny Raboin, Administrative Service Manager III, ginny.raboin@vermont.gov.
Public Records Request Form
All Public Records Requests should be made in writing via the following form.
Note: All records requests received via other means will be entered into this form verbatim.
Public Records by Statue
The Vermont General Assembly has established guidelines to facilitate access to public records requests.
“It is the policy of this sub-chapter to provide for free and open examination of records consistent with Chapter I, Article 6 of the Vermont Constitution. Officers of government are trustees and servants of the people and it is in the public interest to enable any person to review and criticize their decisions even though such examination may cause inconvenience or embarrassment. All people, however, have a right to privacy in their personal and economic pursuits, which ought to be protected unless specific information is needed to review the action of a governmental officer. Consistent with these principles, the general assembly hereby declares that certain public records shall be made available to any person as hereinafter provided. To that end, the provisions of this sub-chapter shall be liberally construed to implement this policy, and the burden of proof shall be on the public agency to sustain its action.” 1 V.S.A. § 315 .
The procedures for requesting public documents are set out in the State Access to Public Records Law at 1 V.S.A. § 316. The following sub-sections outline additional considerations of the law:
§ 317. Definitions; public agency; public records and documents
§ 317a. Disposition of public records
§ 318. Procedure
§ 319. Enforcement
§ 320. Penalties
Records Exempt from Disclosure 1 V.S.A. § 317(c).
Uniform Schedule of Public Record Charges for State Agencies 1 V.S.A. § 316(d)
Uniform Schedule of Public Records Charges for State Agencies
The following fees have been established as the actual cost of providing a copy of a public record. Note that there are fees for copies of public records that are established by statute that may override the fees established by this schedule.
The following fees may be applied for the following:
- Staff time involved in physically duplicating a record, $.33 per minute after the first 30 minutes.
- Senior-level staff time, and information technology specialists’ time spent extracting data from databases or performing similar tasks necessary to comply with a request to create a new public record, $.57 per minute.
- Any other staff time for which cost can be charged and collected under this section, $.45 per minute.
- Photocopies, $.05 per single-sided page, $.09 per double-sided page for pages up to 8.5 by 14 inches.
- Color photocopies, $1.00 per single-sided page.
- Computer-generated paper copies, $.02 per page for pages up to 8.5 by 14 inches.
- Computer diskettes, $.28 each for 3.5-inch diskettes.
- Compact discs, $.86 each for write-once CD w/case, $2.31 each for re-writable CD w/case.
- Audio tapes, $.81 each.
- Video tapes, $1.69 each.
- DVDs, $2.00 each for write-once DVD w/case, $4.00 each for re-writable DVD w/case.