Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm gonna go back and try that. Okay. Hi, Ms. Cohen, I'm back. Great to see you.

Speaker 2: How was your weekend? Good? Yeah, good, good.

Speaker 1: What do you do? Do you have a fun time in the week? Do you have any hobbies?

Speaker 2: Paint, bicycle. No. I look up HIPAA.

Speaker 1: Well, so we looked up HIPAA, and it turns out that there was actually some case law, Jones v. Tennessee, that says that emergency records are public record, they're not protected under HIPAA. So this is settled law, so you can't actually cite HIPAA in this case. And the state Public Records Act says that this is public record, and you have to give it to us.

Speaker 2: Okay, you know, you realize that nothing good can come to me if I give this to you, that only bad things can happen to me if I give this to you.

Speaker 1: Well, you know, I get it. Like, you're trying to navigate so much stuff here, so here's the thing. But if you can say to them that we cited this specific law and your hands are tied, they cannot come after you specifically. You can be like, look, this is what the law says. This is the settled law. I have nothing, I can't do it. I have to do it.

Speaker 2: I'm going to give you guys a hint as a former government worker. We've never done this before. If you could just show us where we've done it before, I could really, if I could bring that to them.

Speaker 1: It just so happens that one of our sister publications, did you want me to come chat with you? No, okay, I'm just checking. So one of our sister publications did this exact same thing in a different county, and so I have that public records request and I have how it was fulfilled.

Speaker 2: Oh, that would be really helpful.

Speaker 1: And so I'd be happy to share it with you if that would help.

Speaker 2: Yeah, if we can just do something that we've done before, I don't have to like...

Speaker 1: Sure. Like, my goal is to make it as easy on you as possible. I do not want to make it hard. I just want to make sure that we can get this information so we can do the work we need to do.

Speaker 2: Well, that was my other question, you know, I want to be helpful. So what's your angle?

Speaker 1: So, yeah, that's a really good question. You know, I actually, we don't really talk about what the purpose is. It's just journalistic. So we're doing journalism out of this information, but we're not... In fact, the state law says we do not have to tell you, and we shouldn't. Because then, you know, we don't want anybody to suggest that you were trying to sway us, and I don't want to get you in trouble.

Speaker 2: We want to be helpful and give you the information you need. So, like, I had them run these statistics for you on exactly, like, how many were at those addresses, and they said that they could do that. So here's what...

Speaker 1: Oh, that's really great. That's fantastic. That's not what I want, but it's certainly useful, and I really appreciate the effort. What I really want is the database that they ran these statistics from. That's what I want.

Speaker 2: Okay. I think you need to give me that piece of paper with how the other people did it. I'll be happy to. In government, we do a lot better if we know that somebody else has done this before.

Speaker 1: And, you know, I've actually... In some cases, we've actually provided some of the queries for folks so that they knew exactly what they needed to ask for out of the data. Okay. Well, you're way over my head now. It's pretty simple. Way, way, way. So I was actually wondering if maybe in our next meeting, when I come with, like, here's the documentation of how it was done elsewhere, maybe we could just involve the person who ran this for you. Oh, okay. Because then we don't have to, like...

Speaker 2: I have to get permission to have somebody other than me talk to you because I'm the face of the agency, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 1: I'd be happy to. I mean, if you want to be in the room, we could just all talk together. I mean, I'm, like, not trying to pull a fast one. Okay. That works. Okay. Great.

Speaker 2: Okay. Cool. Thanks. Hi. So this is Mr. Overberg. He's working with our systems folks. Oh, great. And he's our genius who knows how to make our databases dance and do all these kinds of crazy things. And you guys go at it. I don't really know.

Speaker 1: Oh, just so you have... Here's the documentation of exactly how we requested this data from the county that we talked about and obtained the whole database, which was great because then we were able to query out the addresses that we needed, and it really took the burden off of the government.

Speaker 3: So is this... Oh, this looks fine. Sure. We've got this data. This is all set up and ready to go. So what's the question?

Speaker 2: So how do we do this? How do we get her the data that she has requested and that we apparently are legally required to give her?

Speaker 3: Well, if we're required to give it to them, let's give it to them. Don't you think? Oh.

Speaker 1: That sounds good to me.

Speaker 3: That makes it easy for me. Here. Here.

Speaker 1: Here's the data. All right. Thanks.

Speaker 2: Okay, we're done. That'll be $15,000. What? You already gave it to me.

Speaker 1: Why would there be a cost?

Speaker 2: Well, he's a valuable guy.

Speaker 1: Mr. Overberg, how long did it take you to run that query?

Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't even have to run a query. I just copied the whole database for you. It took about 472 milliseconds.

Speaker 1: Okay, so... Give or take. So there's two things. One, you'll notice that in my public records request, I said for you to identify any costs before fulfilling the request, and you're only, according to state law, entitled to charge the actual cost of running the request, the person's time. And if it was a couple of milliseconds, I'm not sure how you can even charge for that.

Speaker 2: I just want you to go away.

Speaker 1: And I asked for a waiver.

Speaker 2: So here, I just want you to go away.

Speaker 1: Awesome. Thanks. Cool. I got my data.