A bill to put time requirements in Alabama’s law on access to public records moved closer to final passage on Thursday.

The House passed SB270 by Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, by a vote of 101-0.

The bill returns to the Senate because of changes made by the House. The Senate, which passed the bill two weeks ago, could concur with the changes and send the bill to Gov. Kay Ivey, who could sign it into law.

Alabama law says citizens have a right to inspect and copy public records but has no requirements that government agencies respond by any certain times. That has been cited as a major weakness in the law.

Orr’s bill, carried in the House by Rep. Cynthia Almond, R-Tuscaloosa, sets times for when agencies have to acknowledge requests and times when they have to provide substantive responses.

Alabama Press Association Executive Director Felicia Mason said the bill would be an important step in strengthening the law. The association has worked for years to put more teeth into the law.

“Our hope and our intent with this bill was to establish timelines,” Mason said.

She said the bill establishes a process that will be helpful to the public and to the agencies that are custodians of the records.

The bill defines requests for public records in two categories.

Standard requests are those that take less than eight hours of an agency’s staff time to fulfill. Time-intensive requests are those that take more than eight hours to fulfill.

The bill requires agencies to acknowledge requests with 10 business days of receiving them. For standard requests, agencies would have to follow up with a substantive response within 15 days of acknowledging. A substantive response means providing the requested records, agreeing to provide them at a set place or time, agreeing to provide them after payment of a reasonable fee, or denying the request with an explanation of why.

Agencies could extend the response time in 15-day increments by notifying the requester in writing.

If the request is not filled within 30 business days or 60 calendar days after acknowledging receipt, it is presumed to be denied, the bill says.

For time-intensive requests, the deadlines are different. Agencies must provide a substantive response within 45 business days and can extend that in 45-day increments. If there is no substantive response to a time-intensive request with 180 business days or 270 calendar days, the request is presumed to be denied.

The bill says agencies are not required to respond to requests that are vague, ambitious, overly broad, or unreasonable.

The bill would change the law to apply to residents of Alabama and says agencies could require requesters to provide proof of residence.