The biggest nuisance faced by any City Clerk is public records requests. The Public Records Act was enacted to give the public more access to business conducted by the government; to create more transparency, which is as it should be. However, over the past several years it has become a mechanism for what I consider abuse on both sides.
Let me explain, as a City Clerk it is your responsibility to make sure requests for public records are responded to. Government Code Section 6253(a) states, “Public records are open to inspection at all times during the office hours of the state or local agency and every person has a right to inspect any public record, except as hereafter provided.” In Section (b), the code states, “Except with respect to public records exempt from disclosure by express provisions of law, each state or local agency, upon a request for a copy of records that reasonably describes an identifiable record or records, shall make the records promptly available to any person upon payment of fees covering direct costs of duplication, or a statutory fee if applicable. Upon request, an exact copy shall be provided unless impracticable to do so.”
I have always interpreted this to mean at the time a request is made, a response is provided. For instance, if someone wants a copy of Minutes from a meeting the previous year, then a copy is made and provided to the requestor at the time of the request. In my opinion, the law doesn’t say you have ten days to respond to a simple request such as that. However, it has become common practice to provide requestors with a “Public Records Request” form to fill out and they will receive a response within ten days.
If I am interpreting the code correctly, the clerk has 10 days to respond to a request in “unusual circumstances,” as set forth in Section 6253 (c)(1-4). If, for example, the document being requested is not readily available (i.e., in a storage facility) or there is a voluminous number of documents and the Clerk must collect and examine the documents in order to respond. This then is considered impracticable and allows for a ten-day grace period to retrieve the record(s) in response to the request.
Another purpose for the ten-day grace period is to determine whether a document requested is exempt from disclosure and the clerk requires time to consult with the city attorney (or others) to determine whether it can be disclosed.
That is the law in its basic form. Because the law has been broadened over the years to incorporate so much more, we will discuss more about public records in future blogs. I would like to know how other clerks interpret the Public Records Act.