Ohio makes it harder to profit from records destruction.

• Position: LEGISLATION

The Ohio legislature and state supreme court have decided that people should not profit from records-destruction cases.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Lawmakers recently passed a measure to cap the civil penalties for improperly destroying public records to $10,000 per case. Before it was signed into law by Gov. John Kasich, there was no limit on fines an agency could be ordered to pay when sued for destroying records--damages of $1,000 per destroyed record were possible, according to The Columbus Dispatch. The new law also limits attorney fees to $10,000 and requires suits to be brought within five years of the destruction.

Supporters of the new law said it will stop people from requesting records they don't want, but knew were destroyed, so they could sue and cash in.

But critics of the new law worry that it may encourage local governments to destroy potentially incriminating or embarrassing information because the maximum civil fine is only $10,000.

State Sen. Bill Seitz (R), a Cincinnati lawyer, said if government officials destroy records to cover up corruption, they still could face criminal charges, such as obstruction of justice and tampering with records.

"If anybody thinks that a $10,000 penalty and $10,000 in attorney fees is not a sufficient deterrent, then I would remind them that if the destruction is willful ... we have a whole battery of criminal laws that still apply," he said.

The law was prompted by a $1.4 million court ruling against the city of Bucyrus for recording over more than 911 tapes from the 1990s. (The Bucyrus case is back in county court after being...