BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Kevin de Le�n, Chair
SB 1337 (DeSaulnier) - Public records and reports.
Amended: April 21, 2014 Policy Vote: GO 10-0; Jud 7-0
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: May 23, 2014 Consultant: Mark McKenzie
SUSPENSE FILE. AS AMENDED.
Bill Summary: SB 1337 would require state agencies to provide
requested public records within 30 days of a determination that
a record is disclosable, and provide for a 14-day extension of
this deadline in specified unusual circumstances. The bill
would also require the head of each state agency and department,
including elected heads of Constitutional offices, to sign a
statement with every written report to the Legislature or
executive body declaring that the factual contents of the report
are true, accurate, and complete. (Proposed author amendments
would delete provisions requiring state agencies to provide
public records within 30 days of a determination that a record
is disclosable, or within 45 days in specified unusual
circumstances.)
Fiscal Impact: (As approved May 23, 2014)
Likely minor costs to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for
investigation and prosecutions related to the provisions
that require a signed declaration with agency reports,
offset to some extent by fine revenue. (General Fund)
Background: Existing law, the Public Records Act (PRA),
requires state and local agencies to make public records open to
inspection by every person, with specified statutory exceptions,
and to promptly provide copies of public records to any person,
upon payment of fees covering direct costs of duplication, or a
statutory fee if applicable. Upon request, an exact copy shall
be provided unless impracticable to do so. Public records
include all communications related to public business regardless
of physical form or characteristics, including any writing,
picture, sound, or symbol, whether paper, magnetic or other
media, and also includes electronic records. Under current law,
an agency has 10 days within receipt of a request to decide
whether records are disclosable. In the following unusual
SB 1337 (DeSaulnier)
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circumstances this time period may be extended up to 14 days
upon written notice to the person making the request: a single
request requires the examination of a voluminous amount of
distinct records, the requested records are stored off-site,
consultation with other agencies is required, or there is a need
to compile data, construct a computer report, or perform
programming.
Existing law establishes numerous requirements for state and
local government agencies to prepare and submit reports to the
Legislature, the Governor, and other governmental entities.
Existing law provides that every willful omission to perform any
duty enjoined by law upon any public officer, or person holding
any public trust or employment, where no special provision is
made for the punishment of such delinquency, is punishable as a
misdemeanor. Existing law also makes it a misdemeanor for any
officer authorized by law to make or give any certificate or
other writing as true which he or she knows to be false.
Proposed Law: SB 1337 would require a state agency to promptly
provide a requested public record within 30 days of determining
that a request is for a disclosable public record in the
possession of the agency. In the following unusual
circumstances this time period may be extended up to 14 days
upon written notice to the person making the request: a single
request requires the examination of a voluminous amount of
distinct records, the requested records are stored off-site,
consultation with other agencies is required, or there is a need
to compile data, construct a computer report, or perform
programming.
The bill would also require the head of each state agency and
department, including elected heads of state government or
Constitutional offices, to sign a statement with every written
report to the Legislature, a Member of the Legislature, or any
state legislative or executive body declaring that the factual
contents of the report are true, accurate, and complete. The
bill would authorize a civil penalty of up to $20,000,
exclusively assessed and recovered in a civil action brought by
the Attorney General, against any person declaring in the signed
statement that reported material is true when he or she knows
that it is false.
SB 1337 (DeSaulnier)
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Related Legislation: The provisions of this bill that require
department and agency heads to include a signed declaration of
truth and accuracy with reports submitted to the Legislature and
executive bodies are substantially similar to the enrolled
versions of AB 1135 (Strickland, 2007), AB 2404 (Klehs, 2006),
and AB 1625 (Klehs, 2005). All of these measures were vetoed by
the Governor, who noted objections to the bill, in part because
existing law already makes it a misdemeanor for a state or local
official to falsify reports.
Staff Comments: The fiscal impacts of provisions requiring
agencies to provide public records within specified timeframes
are unquantifiable, but likely major. While the majority of PRA
requests received by the over 200 agencies impacted by this bill
could likely be accommodated within 30 days, it would be
virtually impossible to provide requested material within 44
days in cases where the request is voluminous, involves older
records stored off-site, or requires substantial legal review
and redaction of non-disclosable information. As such, affected
agencies would be forced to divert resources from other duties
and request additional staff in order to comply with the
specified deadlines. The impacts on individual agencies and
departments could range from the hundreds of thousands for an
entity that receives relatively few complicated or voluminous
requests to the low millions for a larger agency or department
that routinely receives numerous large PRA requests, such as the
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. In addition, the
bill would likely create a cause of action for failure to comply
with the deadlines, resulting in additional litigation against
state agencies.
Author's amendments would delete Section 1 of the bill, relating
to the Public Records Act. As amended, the bill would require
the heads of agencies and departments to include a signed
declaration of truth and accuracy with specified reports.