Opinion ID: 1953016
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: mpia

Text: The MPIA, codified in Section 10-611, et seq. of the State Government Article, [14] explains that Except as otherwise provided by law, a custodian shall permit a person... to inspect any public record at any reasonable time. See Section 10-613. The Court has explained that the provisions of the ... Act reflect the legislative intent that citizens of the State of Maryland be accorded wide-ranging access to public information concerning the operation of their government. Kirwan v. The Diamondback, 352 Md. 74, 81, 721 A.2d 196, 199 (1998) (internal citations omitted) (emphasis added). In order to carry out this right to access, the Act is to be construed in favor of disclosure. See Section 10-612(b). We recognize that in court cases discovery rules are applicable and are designed to assure a balance, and thus the applicable discovery rules, might, under the circumstances of a particular case, be interpreted to prohibit a document or tape from being subject to discovery. At the administrative agency level, in the present case, however, there are no such discovery rules applicable and the absence of such rules cannot trump or thwart the very purpose of the MPIA, which, as we have previously stated, permits a person to gain broad access to a document/videotape. The MPIA contains its own exemptions. [15] The affording of broad access to public records by citizens is the very purpose of the MPIA, which generally affirm citizens' rights to access government records especially when they involve the requesting citizen. Such situations are very different from civil actions between private parties. An MPIA action is an attempt to gain statutorily guaranteed access to public records, not private information. The MPIA permits an interested party to request and receive the surveillance videotapes from the governmental agency possessing them because he or she is a party in interest and has a right to the tapes from the custodian of record. Thus, in this case, appellant's MPIA request to receive his surveillance videotapes should not have been denied by the Baltimore County Office of Law and the Circuit Court based upon the Shenk decision. The only way that appellant, or anyone in appellant's situation, would be unable to view the surveillance videotapes taken by a public entity and part of the public records would be if some provision in the MPIA prohibited the granting of the request and precluded the disclosure. As we have indicated, because this case is moot we shall not address the MPIA exemptions and whether appellees and the Circuit Court's reliance on the MPIA exemptions was appropriate.