>>A stenographer hired by a municipality to assist in the transcribing
of meeting minutes is providing a publicly funded service on behalf of
that municipality.

Therefore, those records transcribed by the stenographer, acting as an
agent of the Council, shall be viewed as records constructively created
by the Council and are public.<<

At last, a records issue from our friend Don.  Sorry, but I respectfully
disagree with the conclusion reached.  True, there is a contractual
agreement to provide minutes.  However, there is probably no contractual
agreement to provide the actual tapes from the transcription machine.
If there were, then the tapes could be provided as satisfaction of the
agreement, much to the dis-satisfaction of just about everyone but Don.

I would look at this situation as being governed by trade practices,
much like those that exist in the forms world.  You may pay a printer to
set up a template for printing of your forms, you may even provide the
template for him to use.  But the typesetting that is done belongs to
the printer and is not yours.  Unless you specifically claim ownership
of the print template, it belongs to the printer.  Ownership in vested
in the printer by virtue of trade practice.

A similar situation exists when an external party is hired to produce a
report.  Satisfaction of the agreement is the report.  There is no legal
basis that I am aware of that would require all the drafts of the report
prepared prior to completion to be provided and retained as public
records.  

I believe both of the above examples are similar to the one raised
regarding transcription machine tapes.  Then again, I have been wrong in
the past...

Bill R 

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