Put Teeth in Public Records Law

California’s Public Records Act of 1968 is designed to make governmental actions and information readily available to citizens but has correctly been denounced as “a paper tiger.” There is no effective penalty if an agency simply ignores a request or denies it out of hand. Too often, agencies do.

Two bills now before Gov. Gray Davis would make information more accessible to the public, including the news media and academics. SB 1065, by Sen. Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey), and SB 48, by Sen. Byron Sher (D-Stanford), are modest but worthy measures that should be signed into law.

The Bowen bill requires agencies that store records on computers to make that information available in whatever computer format the agency uses.

Officials now may fulfill requests on paper only, which often means flooding the information seeker with hundreds of pages of printed computer data. The same information on a computer disk can be quickly sorted and analyzed.

Under Sher’s SB 48, a refusal could be appealed to the attorney general, who would have to provide a written opinion on the issue within 20 days. The only recourse now is to file a lawsuit, which can be costly and time-consuming and carry little assurance of success. The attorney general could not compel an agency to release data, but the opinion would provide legal guidance that should convince officials it’s better to give up the information than risk losing in court and possibly having to pay a fine for acting in bad faith.

It’s legitimate for the government to withhold a few types of material, such as personnel matters. Otherwise, officials who have nothing to hide should welcome the public to inspect their records. The Bowen and Sher bills would help make that ideal more real.