For municipal officials who respond to requests under the SC Freedom of Information Act, a well-known aspect of FOIA is the deadline for responding.
Within 10 business days of receiving the request for recent documents, the responding public body must respond with its determination on whether the item requested is an available public record, and the reasons for it.
Then, within 30 calendar days of making the response on whether the items are public documents, the public body must provide the documents to the person making the request. In the case of a public body requiring a deposit to be paid for the document, it must provide the documents within 30 days of receiving the deposit. In cases where the requested documents are more than 24 months old, these deadlines are slightly extended.
There are, however, several key exceptions to this system of deadlines for FOIA responses.
The law requires public entities to provide copies of documents, or an opportunity to inspect the documents, immediately upon request, in cases when the person requesting them appears in person at the public entity’s offices during business hours, and without being required to make a written request.
SC Code Section 30-4-50(D) names the items that a municipality must provide immediately, with no waiting period:
Crime information from the last 14 days. Information about the basic details of any crime or report of an alleged crime, such as those found in an initial police incident report, are among those most commonly sought by the news media. The law notes that information may be redacted from reports when it is exempt from disclosure under the law. Because exemptions exist for information that would constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy, some of the common redactions on incident reports include information about victims or juveniles.
The identities of anyone jailed or imprisoned in the previous three months. News media will very frequently seek this information as well.
Minutes of recent council meetings, or the meeting of any other public body, such as a board, committee or commission. The rule applies to all public meetings that have taken place during the previous six months.
Documents distributed to a public body for review during a public meeting. Like the rule on minutes, this requirement is applicable only to the last six months. Generally, the supplemental material included in a council meeting packet meets this
definition. Because FOIA considers these materials, with some very limited exceptions, to be immediately releasable, many city and town governments will post items, such as meeting packets, on their website as a standard procedure. This makes the material easy to retrieve and can go a long way towards reducing time spent answering FOIA requests.
In SC Code Section 30-4-(D), the law notes that this practice establishes compliance with FOIA, but only so long as the public body will also produce the documents upon request for anyone who appears in person.
Note that the rules on public meeting minutes and packets differs from the FOIA rule on public meeting agendas. While cities and towns may post minutes and packets voluntarily — and often will — they are required under FOIA to post agendas to the website, in cases where they have websites. That aspect of agenda posting appears alongside the FOIA rules about distributing the agenda to the media and posting it at the meeting location.