Police Career Incentive Pay Program Applications

Dear Mr. Story,

Thank you for your recent public records request to the Department of Higher Education. My apologies that your initial request sent to DHE.RAO@state.ma.us<mailto:DHE.RAO@state.ma.us> was unsuccessful; we identified a problem with the email address and the form on our public records request website <https://www.mass.edu/about/publicrecords.asp> on May 11 and have since corrected the errors. As our Department continues to work remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, your request sent via U.S. Mail, sent June 16, was not received until July 15, and it was not immediately directed to my attention as the Department's Records Access Officer because my name was not on the communication and we do not have a "PRL Office."

Your request is for “Police Career Incentive Pay Program (PCIPP) applications submitted to the Office of Student Financial Assistance by police departments in Massachusetts.” You have requested these records “going as far back as electronic records are available” and in an “export from an internal database or file used to electronically record and track these applications.” You requested the following fields as they appear on the PDF application available on the Board’s website:

* Department name
* Applicant name
* Date appointed as a regular full-time police officer
* Present rank
* Date attained
* Present base salary $
* Institution awarding degree
* Incentive level
* # of credit hours earned
* Institution
* Dates attended
* Program
* Awarded a degree?
* Title of degree
* Date degree awarded/expected
* Transcript enclosed?
* Any internal fields that can be provided e.g. application status, reason for disapproval, etc.

The Department will not be able to fill your request in its entirety in the way you have requested it. The first limitation is that the applications that municipalities submit do not automatically populate into a database; they are sent in as hard copies. We do have a database that contains data input by municipalities (more on this below), and the fields it contains align with some of the data that you are seeking, but it is not a 100% match. The data that is available in the database is as follows:

* Department Name
* Municipality
* Applicant Name
* Name
* Date Attained
* Fiscal Year
* Year associated with a percentage increase
* Present Base Salary
* Yearly Base Salary
* Incentive Level
* Percent Increase

I am attaching a sample copy of a report that we can run from the database. This sample is for one year in one municipality.

The remainder of the information on the applications (and that you seek in your request) can only be researched through a manual examination of the hard copy application and/or the officer’s submitted transcript. We have paper copies of applications and associated documents going back to the 1970s, though many of them are in offsite storage.

I think it is also important to relate some of the history of the PCIPP program and the Quinn Bill, as it may explain some of the limitations on the data that we do have. When the program was created in the 1970s, it was also partially funded by the legislature. However, the state funding for PCIPP ceased in 2009. Many municipalities stopped operating their programs due to the lack of funding, but some continued to offer the program to their officers (though only those officers who were hired prior to July 1, 2009). The Department's database primarily served the purpose of tracking those state-funded PCIPP payments, so once the Commonwealth moved away from providing the financial support for the PCIPP bonus, most departments discontinued the practice of updating their information in the database on an annual basis. The Department's approval is still required to certify someone for PCIPP, but those certifications are done through the paper process because until very recently, many institutions could not provide transcripts electronically, so everything was sent as hard copies. So the more recent data available in the database will also be more limited as it consists of only those municipalities that continue to submit their data on the off chance that state funding gets restored to this program.

Given the above information, please let me know how you would like to proceed with your request, and I will be in a better position to provide you with a time and potential cost estimate.

Best,
Ashley

Ashley H. Wisneski, Esq.
Deputy General Counsel
Massachusetts Department of Higher Education
One Ashburton Place, 14th floor
Boston, MA 02108
(617) 994-6952 office
(617) 727-0955 fax
www.mass.edu<http://www.mass.edu/>

PLEASE NOTE: The Department of Higher Education is working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While I will be checking voicemail periodically, email is the best way to reach me if you need immediate assistance.

Dear Mr. Story,

Thank you for your patience as I worked with my colleagues who oversee the PCIPP program to determine the options for fulfilling your revised public records request, outlined below.

Unfortunately, the more limited data that you are now seeking (and just for the Boston Police Department) is not all available in our existing database. The database would only provide the officer's name and municipality; the information about the program, institution, and date of completion is still only available on the paper applications. Our PCIPP team reviewed the active records that we have for Boston and they take up approximately five large lateral file cabinet drawers; they estimate that there are at least 300 files per drawer, so we have a minimum of 1500 records. (We also have inactive files that may need to be accessed, which are in storage in the same building, but we have not reviewed them for volume.)

Public records law does not require public entities to create records in response to requests, so in a normal situation, your only option would be to receive copies of these 1500+ applications and to compile a spreadsheet yourself. And this is still an option (Option 1), if you wish to receive all of the applications. This would also provide you with the additional data points that you requested in your initial request. However, the applications contain considerable personal information about each officer, including home address, phone number, and social security number, which would need to be redacted to prevent "an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." (M.G.L. c. 4, s. 7(26)<https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleI/Chapter4/section7>). The process of redacting each individual application and then copying it would, we believe, be far more time-consuming (and costly) than if we were to compile a spreadsheet for you containing just the data you are requesting. We would be willing, given these circumstances, to pull together this spreadsheet for you (Option 2) to try to reduce the expense associated with this request.

Our cost estimate for Option 2 is that this would take approximately 3-4 full weeks of on-site work at an estimated rate of approximately $18 - $20/hr. We would need to hire a temporary employee to do this work, as we do not have a staff member who can dedicate this amount of time to fulfilling a public records request, so the hourly rate is subject to change but in no event would be more than $25/hr, as that is the statutory limit, and there is no charge for the first 4 hours. (M.G.L. c. 66, s. 10(d)(ii)<https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleX/Chapter66/Section10>). Based on this, we believe that this request will cost approximately $3,000 (37.5hr/week @$20hr = $750 per week x 4 weeks).

If you wish to proceed with Option 1, we would need additional time for redaction and copying, which would probably take an additional 2 weeks, at an approximate cost of $4,500 (37.5hr/week @$20hr = $750 per week x 6 weeks).

For both options, if we need to access inactive records, the cost will increase because the number of records that we are basing this estimate off of will increase.

In response to your question ("To clarify, when you say 'The Department's approval is still required to certify someone for PCIPP' does this mean the Department confirms the officer completed a program approved for PCIPP? Is this solely by reading a sealed transcript provided by the applicant, or is completion also verified with the university/college? Is there a log, spreadsheet, or other electronic record that is kept for that process?"), the employing municipality submits Attachment A<https://www.mass.edu/osfa/documents/PCIPP%20Application%20FY20.pdf> for officers; Attachment A records the officer’s employment and education history. An official transcript, which must be from an institution approved by DHE to participate in PCIPP, is also attached and submitted with Attachment A. It is not cross-verified with the institution, as it is an official transcript; I do not know whether the municipality requests the transcript from the institution itself or if the officer requests it and then provides it to the municipality, and I do not know which institutions submit their transcripts as a sealed copy. A record of approvals is kept in the database from which an excerpt was sent to you in my last correspondence, to the extent that a municipality submits to the database; column F is the status of the approval. Otherwise, the approval is noted in the "For Authorized Use Only" section of Attachment A.

Please let me know how you would like to proceed with this request.

Thank you,
Ashley

Ashley H. Wisneski
Deputy General Counsel
Massachusetts Department of Higher Education
One Ashburton Place, Room 1401
Boston, MA 02108
(617) 994-6952

Dear Mr. Story,

Thank you for your response. I am sorry we were not able to provide you with the records you seek, but please feel free to reach out if you have additional questions about the PCIPP program or if you are able to narrow your request further.
Best,
Ashley

Ashley H. Wisneski
Deputy General Counsel
Massachusetts Department of Higher Education
One Ashburton Place, Room 1401
Boston, MA 02108
(617) 994-6952