The Complainant proffered several allegations that the Town violated the APRA in connection with his multi-part APRA request. The Complainant alleged that the Town "heavily redacted" a number of documents and failed to reference the particular APRA provision(s) upon which it relied in making the redactions. Additionally, Complainant alleged that the Town's request for an extension violated R.I. Gen. Laws § 38-2-3(e) because the extension was not "particularized" to his specific request, and that the Town's request for prepayment in the amount of $150.00 violated the APRA. Based on the totality of the evidence, this Office found that the Town's response letter cited the specific APRA provisions pursuant to which it was redacting documents that were responsive to Complainant's request. Consistent with our finding in Finnegan v. Town of Scituate, PR 19-22 addressing a similar request, we found that the redactions made to the documents provided in response to Complainant's request were permissible under R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 38-2-2(4)(a)(I)(a), (b). We also found that the Town did not violate the APRA by extending the time to respond to the Complainant's request or by assessing prepayment. Accordingly, we found that the Town did not violate the APRA in connection with Complainant's request.
