HUBBARD TOWNSHIP — Township officials said they were “inundated” with public records requests in 2024 — roughly 3,000 of them.

Trustee Jason Tedrow, who initially mentioned the volume of requests to interviewees for their open trustee position weeks prior, explained that a number of the requests were done in the names of former police Sgt. Christopher Gifford and former police Chief Ron Fusco. Fusco was on a one-year contract that wasn’t renewed by trustees but was marked as terminated as of Jan. 1, 2025, according to Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy records. OPOTA is under the jurisdiction of the Ohio Attorney General’s office.

Fusco did not return a voicemail seeking comment.

The most recent requests have been done anonymously, and some of them have floated over to the Eagle Joint Fire District, where they’ve received 120 thus far, Tedrow added.

“There was a number put in under the police chief’s name; there was actually probably more put in under our sergeant’s name that resigned,” Tedrow said. “And (another) went to a name I can’t validate is from the area — Steven Cloud.”

Out of that 3,000, Tedrow said they saw 2,600 in December alone, under Cloud’s name.

Tedrow said the requesters fill the emails too, putting multiple requests in each one.

“Five total requests, all of them had as many as 50 in an email. It was for things like ‘your training’ or ‘your cooperation’ on stuff like doing the Christmas parade,” Tedrow said. “One of the ones for the police department was in relation to the ‘Coffee with a Cop’ in December. Like what trainings we’ve had and records in regards to that. It wasn’t stuff like a meeting.”

Requests throughout other parts of the year were made up of what Tedrow considered “surges,” seeking information about items that came up at meetings or body camera footage of a particular officer for the entire month.

And fulfilling these requests hasn’t been cheap.

“We spent over $20,000 last year on records requests. Now I did find where there’s actually a law that was put in in 2011, where it looks like damages can be capped at $10,000,” he said. “So we might have actually been wiser to say ‘we’re not going to show any of them,’ because you can file a suit over it.”

“Damages were capped at $10,000 and that doesn’t include the legal fees that we could have been susceptible to,” Tedrow added.

Tedrow said he believes the requests are intended to cause financial damage and create a problem for the township.

Trustee William Colletta said while they’ve been helping with the requests, Fiscal Officer Jennifer Evans mainly handles them, sending them to the township’s legal counsel if necessary and formats them into spreadsheets.

REDUCING WORKLOAD

Trustees have been looking into ways to ease the stress of the requests.

They reported to residents at a Jan. 15 regular trustees meeting that they’ve discussed the implementation of a new records request policy with Cherry Poteet, an attorney and Liberty Township’s law director.

They’ve also spoken with Samantha Monroe, an assistant prosecutor with the county prosecutor’s office, according to Colletta.

“The township’s rights are, we basically have to respond to the request in a suitable amount of time, let them know we got their request and that we’re processing it. And we give them an estimate of when they can expect their request back,” Colletta said. “And with the Trumbull County Prosecutor, all we have to do is set aside a certain amount of time to work on these.”

Some of the requests might not be returned by 2027 or 2028, he said, as they’re allotting 10 hours a week to them and they aren’t required to work on them all of the time.

Colletta said they also plan on charging for the amount of paper used, and they’ll require the requesters to come to the township office to pick them up.