The Landbote has to pay 450 francs for redactions
The Winterthur Landbote of the Tamedia publishing house has received an invoice from the city of Winterthur: 450 francs for redacted passages in an investigation report. The report was about maladministration by the city police.
Last fall, the Winterthur city council had presented an investigation report that dealt with the reasons for two suicides within the police corps. The city council presented the report to the media, but did not want to release it.
The Country Messenger demanded to see the 95-page report on the basis of the Public Information Act and was granted access. The district council ordered the city council to release the report on hierarchical management culture and mobbing.
The Country Messenger was then handed the report. It contained numerous blacked out passages to protect people. For these anonymizations, the city now charged the newspaper 450 francs, as the latter wrote on Friday in its article on the report.
In principle, access to information should be free of charge, according to the Public Information Act. Only if the processing of the request involves "considerable effort" and is "out of reasonable proportion to the public interest" can the authority demand a "reasonable fee". (SDA)
