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Asked and Answered

Public official salaries and the CPRA

June 14, 2009

Question

I’d like to find information on executive salaries for public utility organizations (SMUD, LADWP, WAPA and NCPA).  Can you advise me if these are publicly available records and if so, what’s the best way to obtain them might be?

Answer

The California Public Records Act exempts certain information from disclosure on the basis of personal privacy. (Govt. Code s. 6254(c)). Some public agencies have relied on this exemption to withhold salary information of its employees, or they disclose no more than an employee’s salary range or a list of job titles and salaries, but withhold information allowing a person to determine exactly how much an individual earns.Currently, there is a split in authority among California courts of appeal regarding disclosure of compensation information for public employees.  The court in Teamsters Local 856 v. Priceless, 112 Cal. App. 4th 1500 (2003), concluded that public employees have a legally protected right of privacy in their personnel files and, based on that finding, noted that compensation information may not be subject to disclosure under the Public Records Act.

However, this case dealt only with rank-and-file employees, and the public entities involved in that case explicitly agreed to disclose compensation information for their higher-ranking public employees.  In a later case, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, Local 21 AFL-CIO v. Superior Court, 128 Cal. App. 4th 586 (2005) (Contra Costa Newspapers), the court disagreed with the Priceless decision and held that the right to privacy in one’s personal finances does not preclude the disclosure of the names and salaries of public employees. The court’s ruling specifically applied to public employees earning $100,000 or more per year. Therefore, if you are seeking compensation information for high-ranking/earning employees, according to Priceless and Contra Costa Newspapers, that information is not exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Act.  If you seek compensation information for rank-and-file employees, then the administration (currently) has more of a basis for refusing to disclose the information.  Unions representing public employees have asked the California Supreme Court to resolve the inconsistencies in the Priceless and Contra Costa Newspapers decisions. Their request is pending before the Court.

Asked & Answered posts should not be relied on as legal advice, and FAC makes no guarantees about their completeness or accuracy. All posts carry a date of publication that readers should take note of in assessing their usefulness, given that laws and interpretations of them may change over time. Posts predating Jan. 1, 2023, that discuss the California Public Records Act may contain statute numbers no longer in use. Please see this page for a table showing how the California Public Records Act has been renumbered.