Asked & Answered

Q: The County’s Public Safety Group sent me an invoice in regards to my PRA request for copies of their three existing contracts with Cal Fire. These records already exist in an electronic/ digital format. There is no reason to charge me a fee for them to be delivered to me via email. They just have to be uploaded into the email. No other public agency has charged a fee for an existing document which

Q: This is two pronged:  I asked the City Clerk multiple times if they had heard from county elections officials if they had verified signatures turned in for a citizen’s ballot initiative. I was told repeatedly they had not yet heard. The next day, they sent me the document from the county showing the signatures had been verified. It was time stamped by the City Clerk shortly before 4 p.m.the previous day. In other words, the city clerk

Q: The School Board announced last night that they had narrowed the field of candidates for superintendent to one finalist when reporting out of closed session. But no vote was taken. The board president emailed me today that they had reached consensus. How can they do that without a vote being taken? Is that legal? A: The Brown Act contains a few narrow exceptions to its general requirement that meetings be open to the public.  One

Q: I have been spending a lot of time inspecting the minutes of a local business improvement district. This week they changed their office hours from M-F 8:30-5:30 to be by appointment only, and this greatly limits my ability to look at documents in their office. Their staff is in the office during the old hours, but they claim that they’re not open except by appointment. Is this allowable under CPRA? A: Under the California

Q: Please tell me how I can go about submitting a PRA request for a lawmaker’s emails and calendar, and for the agendas of a legislative caucus. To whom do I submit my request? A: Statutes governing access to public records differ depending upon the person from whom you seek the records.  The Public Records Act only applies to records “prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency…”  Gov’t Code § 6252(e)(emphasis