Nevada County: Problems with Public Records Requests

“The California Public Records Act (the “Act”) is an indispensable component of California’s commitment to open government. The purpose of the Act is to give the public access to information that enables them to monitor the functioning of their government. The Act’s fundamental precept is that governmental records shall be disclosed to the public, upon request, unless there is a legal basis not to do so.”

Proposition 59 Amended the California Constitution Granting Access to the Public

In November 2004, the voters approved Proposition 59, amending the California Constitution to include the public’s right to access public records. “The people have the right of access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business, and, therefore, the meetings of public bodies and the writings of public officials and agencies shall be open to public scrutiny.”

Measure V Records Have Been Difficult to Obtain from the County

While doing my analysis of Nevada County expenditures for Measure V, I had to file a number of Public Records Requests for documents and emails. This was a very tedious process made all the more difficult by delays in getting the records, and sometimes, it seems, deliberate attempts not to deliver exactly what I asked for. 

So, it came as a surprise to read an article in the new on-line publication, Sierra Thread, that the County was just ordered to pay $85,000 in legal fees over “illegally withheld election records,”

“On June 21, 2023, after 10 months of litigation, Honorable S. Robert Tice-Raskin ordered the Nevada County Elections office to release to the public a trance of public records related to the November 2020 General Election, which Nevada County had been illegally refusing to disclose for nearly two years despite analogous records from San Francisco’s election office being provided to the general public and identical records being provided by Stanislaus County.

Sunshine Ordinances in Counties and Cities Provide Even Greater Access to the Public Records

Beyond the law, the Act itself provides that “except as otherwise prohibited by law, a state or local agency may adopt requirements for itself that allow for faster, more efficient, or greater access to records than prescribed by the minimum standards set forth in this chapter.”

 A number of local agencies have gone beyond the mandates of the Act by adopting their own “sunshine ordinances” to afford greater public access. 

To encourage local agencies’ compliance, the Act provides for a mandatory award of court costs and attorney’s fees to a prevailing plaintiff. A plaintiff need not obtain all of the requested records in order to be the prevailing party in litigation. A plaintiff is also considered the prevailing party if the lawsuit ultimately motivated the agency to provide the requested records.

My personal experience in trying to obtain documents and emails from County officials is there has been, in some cases, a deliberate attempt to delay, confuse, and obfuscate my requests. No one filing a PRA should have to go through this. The county needs to train staff in how to respond to PRA’s and what the law is. Sometimes I would receive only a portion of the documents I asked for so it was almost impossible to keep track of what PRA was actually completed. There are several of my PRAs still outstanding.

In light of the recent lawsuit, and the County having to pay $85,000 in legal fees, it would seem the County CEO and County Counsel would be wise to instruct staff appropriately in fulfilling PRAs in order to avoid future litigation. It also seems County Counsel is part of the problem in defending the County against fulfilling the PRAs in a timely manner. This, also, needs correcting. The result of all of this is yet another example of wasting taxpayer dollars for no good reason. Taxpayers deserve a transparent government.