Would releasing information endanger children (or foster parents)?

Enquirer presses for foster records
McGurk, Margaret, Cincinnati Enquirer, Dec. 12, 2006, Metro pg. B1.

Enquirer attorney Jack Greiner said Monday that he will ask the Ohio Supreme Court to hear oral arguments in a bid to make the state reveal the identities of foster parents who are paid to look after children in trouble.

Greiner filed the action on behalf of The Enquirer after the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services refused to make the information public. The Enquirer asked for the data as part of an ongoing assessment of the foster system after the alleged killing of disabled 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel by his foster parents in August.

"If (foster parents) are going to seek certification and the taxpayer money they get, it seems to me it's not asking too much for the public to know who these people are," Greiner said.

The same filing asks for the release of records about Jaysen Bell, a Clermont County foster father indicted in October on charges of rape, sexual battery, gross sexual imposition and sexual imposition involving two boys placed in his home for protection. Bell, free on a $100,000 bond, was foster father to more than 30 children since 1999.

In October, Barbara Riley, director of the social service agency, said releasing the roster of foster parents would endanger children. She issued no statement about the Supreme Court filing.

"We believe our interpretation of the law protecting foster children and the addresses where they live is correct and one we will defend," said Dennis Evans, a department spokesman.

Enquirer managing editor Hollis Towns said the public has a right to know. "

The public wants answers to the Marcus case, and they want assurances that other foster parents are capable of caring for the state's 10,000-plus foster children.

"State officials have dragged their feet from the start of the Marcus Fiesel case on opening the process to public scrutiny," Towns said. He said other states opened up their foster-care systems to public inspection and found that it increased public trust.

In the Enquirer filing, Greiner took issue with the legal rationale offered by the state agency as the basis for its refusal - one federal law and one state court decision, which the department said exempt foster-parent data from Ohio's open records law.

The federal law calls for protecting information about people receiving adoption and foster assistance. However, Greiner wrote, "By definition, a foster-care provider is not a person 'assisted.'"

The Ohio court case cited by the agency dealt with a database that included personal information about children taking part in a public program. Greiner said the foster-parent records include no information identifying children.

In reference to the Bell case, state authorities said his records were exempt from the open-records law as part of a police investigation.

"The Bell records were not created as part of any law enforcement investigation. They are essentially Bell's application to be a foster care provider," Greiner wrote in the complaint, which seeks an order for release of the records, and attorney fees.

"What we're talking about here is the ability to provide scrutiny of a system," said Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition based at the Missouri School of Journalism.

"Otherwise, we're asking government to scrutinize itself. Government has proven in many, many ways and many, many times that it's terribly bad at scrutinizing itself. It's public access to those records that allows public interest to be recognized. I don't think government is intrinsically going to do that."

About the state's claim that releasing the information would endanger children, Davis said, "This is something I see all the time - making public information policy based on the wildest plot lines instead of what's much more likely to happen. Foster children fall through the cracks because of no scrutiny. That's a hell of a lot more likely to happen than some movie-of-the-week scenario."