“Right now it’s [up to] 10 days for compliance with requests, so any reduction in time is an important step forward,” said Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.

While pushing for expeditious release of all public records, the ACLU and the freedom of information group Access/RI say it’s the arrest records that have caused the greatest friction between open records advocates and state and local government.

“Access to police reports has been the single most consistent problem throughout the years with Open Records Law compliance,” Brown said.

When a serious crime or police event occurs, journalists and public watchdogs tend to push for official information, while police departments and the state’s attorney general often argue that releasing details could hurt the investigation.

Scott Pickering, managing editor of East Bay Newspapers and president of the Rhode Island Press Association, agrees that while the bill may not offer a perfect solution, it creates a much-needed sense of uniformity and consistency in how records are released.

The problem now, Pickering says, is that each police department has a different policy for doling out arrest records and what constitutes a complete report.

“In an electronic age when so many records [are] available with a few clicks on a computer, to have to wait 10 days” for basic records from one’s community government or police department doesn’t make sense, he said.

The bill also calls for state agencies to train employees who would be authorized to grant or deny open records requests so as to avoid time-consuming confusion about what is public and what is not. And it would increase fines for those who knowingly ignore the law.

A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said last night that he was surprised to learn the amendment had been finalized –– that office believed the particulars of the language were still being hammered out.

The Department of Administration, meanwhile, has sent a letter to the legislature saying it will undoubtedly be difficult for state agencies to comply with large records requests in a week’s time (the bill allows an extension to 20 days for complicated requests).

The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on the amended bill late this afternoon. A similar bill in the House has been postponed while Senate sponsor J. Michael Lenihan, D-East Greenwich, and the stakeholders worked out the amendment on the Senate side.