Accessing public payrolls
Q: I recently filed a public records request for teacher payroll information with the Los Angeles Unified School District. My request was denied on the grounds that it represented an unreasonable invasion of privacy. It’s my understanding that public employee payroll documents should not be exempt through the “privacy” clause. A fellow student working with me sent an appeal to the district’s superintendent’s office, but to no avail. At this point, we are unaware of any further options we might have open to us, but we believe we are being improperly denied what should be public information. Do you have any suggestions about what steps I should take from this point? Thank you very much.
A: At this point, your best option may be to wait for the California Supreme Court’s ruling in International Federal of Prof. and Tech. Engrs v. Superior Court, or at least the California Court of Appeal’s decision in California Newspaper Partnership dba Marin Independent Journal v. County of Marin, both of which are likely to address the issue. Unfortunately, we cannot tell you when either of these cases will be decided, but the earliest would probably be late summer or the fall.
At the moment, the only published decisions in California dealing with payroll information in the context of a PRA request are Braun v. City of Taft, 154 Cal. App. 3d 332 (1984) and Teamsters Local 856 v. Priceless, LLC, 112 Cal. App. 4th 1500 (2003). While Braun held that payroll information for a single employee was public under the PRA, Teamsters held that payroll information for a city may be considered private AT LEAST IN A CITY THAT HAS A HISTORY OF NOT DISCLOSING THE INFORMATION.
If you can document prior instances when LAUSD publicly released payroll information in a supplemental appeal to the district, that may allow you to get around the Teamsters decision. However, given the pending cases, the district may opt to wait to see how the CA Supreme Court rules before changing its mind.
That is, unless the teachers and administrators have written contracts with LAUSD that includes the amount of compensation. In that case, the written contracts are public records under CA Govt Code section 6245.8 and may not be withheld from the public for any reason, including privacy. If that is the case, you should submit a supplemental request citing section 6254.8.
If the district continues to withhold the records, and you think you are entitled to them either under section 6254.8 or because LAUSD has previously disclosed this information and thus cannot rely on the Teamsters decision, your only other recourse is to file a petition for writ of mandate with the superior court.