SB 191 introduced by Sen. Yoder provides that a records request to a city agency by a city legislative body or an individual member of that body isn’t treated the same as other public records request. In particular, the records cannot be redacted, the recipient is limited in further disclosing the record, and there are protections for the city agency that discloses a record that would otherwise be nondisclosable.
A good number of the mandatory exceptions to the Access to Public Records Act would also be nondisclosable under this statute. With respect to records that can be withheld at the discretion of the agencies, agencies would still have the discretion to withhold investigatory records, attorney work product, and records that would expose a vulnerability to terrorist attack.
I’m not sure that amending the public records law is the way to go here. First, this seems to be an internal municipal government issue. So, the answer would seem to be that you want to define the city legislative body’s authority in such a way that they have discretion to access the city agency records. However, that probably ties in to my second critique which is to question whether the authority should be vested in the hands of individual members of the city legislative body. The will of the individual isn’t the will of the body. The individual acting independently of the legislative body is a member of the public – no more, no less. He or she should not have special rights. Finally, it seems peculiar to confine this legislation to cities. Why not other political subdivisions? If it’s sound governing policy for one kind of unit, why not others?
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