Open records to Parents is productive and inevitable

Actuary "Ezekial 25:17 - The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequites of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he that shepherds the weak from the valley of darkness for he is truly his brother's keeper, and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers, and you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

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Sunday, Dec. 27, 1998

Closed doors often conceal open records, study finds

More than half of 100 requests in area result in violations of law

By JIM DAY
Staff Writer

Elizabeth Ann Mendoza wanted to know if any convicted sex offenders lived in the neighborhood where her daughter walked home from Los Encinos Elementary School.
Diana Garcia wanted to see documents outlining a beating her son suffered at the hands of other students in the Latchkey Program at Houston Elementary School.
Both women sought and obtained, with varying degrees of success, their information through the Texas Public Information Act, a law designed to ensure that governments make available to the public information collected and maintained at taxpayer expense.
In the 25 years since a scandal at the highest levels of Texas government helped spark open records laws, Texas lawmakers have overhauled and revised open government provisions. Further changes will be pushed in the upcoming legislative session that starts Jan. 12, with some lawmakers wanting to strengthen penalties against violators and to open administrative records of judges.
In cases such as Garcia's, citizens can use those laws to force changes in how government operates. After a three-month battle over the records with the Corpus Christi Independent School District and a threat to sue the district, an additional supervisor for the Latchkey Program was hired -satisfying Garcia's concerns.
Statewide, government agencies handle thousands of open records requests each year, frequently providing documents with little hassle or cost. But the laws also are commonly circumvented, abused and ignored by some government agencies.
In a four-month study, the Caller-Times sent requests for public records to 100 government agencies, including city and county governments, law enforcement agencies and school districts.

Forty-two governments complied fully with the law; 58 did not.

Twenty governments responded within the time period, but asked why the Caller-Times wanted the information. It's a violation of the Public Information Act to "inquire into the purpose for which the information will be used."

Twenty-one agencies responded only after follow-up calls.

Eight governments either never provided the information, sent it after a long delay or charged higher costs than allowed.

Officials with nine agencies said they did not recall receiving the request.
Agencies frequently provide the information without question - Mendoza's request for the names of convicted sex offenders in her area was granted promptly by the Corpus Christi Independent School District.
But in some statewide and local cases, requests for presumably simple and clearly public information are tied up for weeks - and sometimes longer - by government officials steadfast in their refusal to release it.

Request leads to change

When Garcia asked Latchkey supervisors at her son's school for the reports about his beating that occurred Oct. 17, 1997, they refused to give them to her. School officials said she needed to talk to the Corpus Christi Park and Recreation Department, which runs the program.
Park and Recreation officials referred her request to the city's legal department; lawyers there said they could not release the information because the names and statements of student witnesses were confidential.
Garcia said she didn't care about the names of the children. She just wanted to know what happened that day.
City officials sought a ruling from the state Attorney General's Office, which ruled that the records were public information as long as the children's names were blacked out.
The Attorney General's Office told the city on Jan. 6 to release the reports, but on Jan. 14, when she called the city again, she still had not received them, Garcia said.
"My husband was saying, `Let it go,' but I said, `No, I'm not letting it go.'|"
Finally, after reminding city officials that the attorney general had told them to release the reports, she got them - nearly three months after her original request.
With those papers in hand, she told Latchkey officials she would sue unless they got more adults to supervise the program.
The Latchkey Program at Houston Elementary has since hired a third coach to watch the children. Garcia is no longer threatening legal action because she is now pleased with the oversight, she said.
What she's not pleased about is that it took more than two months to get information about an incident involving her own child.
"There was a lot of red tape involved. It was much tougher to get the reports than we anticipated."

Local, statewide struggles

Garcia is just one of many people who have been blocked by government officials when they ask to see information that concerns them or their children.

In 1992, after his daughter got in trouble for being tardy to class, Robert Lett asked officials in Houston's Klein Independent School District to give him records that would show if she'd had other disciplinary problems.
They declined. Attorney General Dan Morales ruled that the records were open.
Klein ISD sued Morales and Lett to keep his daughter's records closed.
That case went to the Texas Supreme Court, which allowed the records to be released -nearly five years after Lett requested them.
"I saw two things: First, that the school district was being mean. Sometimes, the little guy gets hurt, and that was happening here," said Rob Wiley, Lett's attorney and a director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. "Second, this was an important freedom of information issue."
While that battle was being fought, the Legislature in 1995 passed a law saying requesters of information could no longer be sued over the requests.

One of the Caller-Times' open records requests filed last year sought reports and personnel files concerning the death of Edward Seth Rogers Jr., who was shot by police in April 1997. City of Corpus Christi officials refused to release the records, arguing that they expected to be sued over the shooting. They appealed the request to the state Attorney General's Office - a step outlined in the Public Information Act.
Three times, the Attorney General's Office said the city should release the records. Three times, the city refused and asked the attorney general to reconsider. When the Attorney General's Office stood by its ruling, the city released personnel records of two of the officers involved. A state district judge blocked the release of a third officer's records earlier this year.

For more than a year, the Corpus Christi Police Department has routinely withheld the names of people arrested until charges are filed, a violation of the open records laws. After the Caller-Times this month provided Police Chief Pete Alvarez with an attorney general's opinion clearly stating that such names were public information, the chief agreed to review his department's policy. Recently, police released a suspect's name without delay.

Sometimes what may be considered minor information even is withheld. In June, the Caller-Times asked Corpus Christi city officials for the color choices being considered for the roof of Memorial Coliseum. The city refused to release the list of colors and required an official request under the state's Public Information Act. City Attorney Jimmy Bray took the position that the color choices were part of a "working document" and therefore not open to the public. Soon afterward, the city staff relented and revealed that the choice was either teal or the original gray.

Local test

In August, the Caller-Times sent written requests for public records to 100 government agencies in the Coastal Bend. The information requested included names and birth dates of school bus drivers and travel records for city officials - all clearly public under state law.
Under the law, public information must be "promptly" released. If an agency feels the information should be withheld, officials have 10 business days to ask the Attorney General's Office for an opinion.
Less than half the agencies - 42 - complied with all aspects of the open records law. The other 58 either asked why the Caller-Times wanted the information - which is specifically forbidden by the law - responded after the time limits had passed, or didn't respond at all.

In Kingsville, city Finance Director Hector Hinojosa said the Caller-Times request - which was not filled until the newspaper asked about the information almost four months later - was delayed because our request "got buried in the paperwork on his desk." Hinojosa asked why we wanted the information.

In Mathis, city officials failed to respond to a request for the 1998-99 budget. On Aug. 31, City Administrator Manuel Lara telephoned the Caller-Times and said the budget would be mailed the next week. The Caller-Times never received the document.
Contacted by the Caller-Times almost four months later, Lara apologized for the delay, saying he had been "really busy."
"I accept full responsibility," Lara said. "I guess I really dropped the ball."

In Alice, new City Manager Gonzalo Chapa - who began work Nov. 10 - said he did not know why the original request for the city manager's travel records from 1997 through June 1998 was ignored.
"It was probably put aside somewhere and somebody never got to it," Chapa said.

In Beeville, police department officials promptly acknowledged receiving a request for the types of radar equipment they use, but it took two more calls before officials sent the information.
"A lot of times, it has to do with being short-handed and busy," Beeville Police Chief Joe Salinas said. "That's why it may have taken a little longer."

In Benavides, city employees asked the mayor for approval before sending the Caller-Times a copy of the city budget. But after the mayor approved it, putting the information together got put on a back burner, said Elda Sanchez, the city's bookkeeper. The Caller-Times received the budget Dec. 17 - almost four months after the request was made.
"We put it to one side, I'm sorry to say," Sanchez said.

High costs

Other agencies sent the information much later than the time period allowed by the law, or charged more for copies than state law allows - 10 times higher, in one case.
In Rockport, photocopy charges are $1 a page for city documents, higher than the 10 cents a page set by the General Services Commission, the state agency that sets the base prices that governments can charge for public information.
The cost was set by former city staffers and has not changed recently, City Secretary Irma Parker said.
She said she thought the cost for copies, and other services provided by city staffers, was based on past General Service Commission guidelines. But she has not looked to update the charges since she took over as secretary in July, she said.
In addition to the written requests, reporters made in-person requests at the offices of nine area government offices - without identifying themselves as journalists.
Public officials routinely told the reporters they must wait 10 working days to see basic information, such as phone bills or the city manager's contract. Officials in four offices - Corpus Christi's human resources department, Alice's city accounting department, Kingsville's assistant city manager's office and the Rockport City Secretary's Office - asked who the reporter was with or why they wanted the information. Although government agencies can ask to see a requester's identification, they are expressly forbidden from asking why the information is being requested or how it will be used.

A call for change

Texas governmental entities requested 2,847 attorney general opinions on open records in 1997 - up more than 600 percent from the 396 opinions sought in 1988, according to a study earlier this year by Consumer's Union, a watchdog group and publisher of Consumer Reports.
While most of these requests for attorney general opinions were legitimate, Consumer's Union found that many government entities repeatedly ask the attorney general if clearly public information could be withheld. Some of the requests appeared to be attempts to stall on releasing information, the study found.
The Consumer's Union study noted that the cities of Dallas and Houston each tried to conceal autopsy reports in 1997; Texas criminal law specifically states that autopsy reports are public records.
Such actions violate the spirit of the Public Information Act, said Reggie James, the state director of Consumers Union.
"What might sound like an arcane legal issue really has a wide impact," he said. "There is far less graft going on. And there's far more access to the public."
Consumer's Union recommended that the state limit some of the broadest and vaguest exemptions to open records. Specifically, the report suggested that the state review the provision that allows governments to withhold information if officials believe there might be a lawsuit involving the information; to streamline the attorney general's review process by eliminating reconsiderations; and to provide for civil penalties against government entities that ignore open records laws.
State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, who served as chairman this year of a committee that examined open records laws, said he plans to introduce bills in the upcoming legislative session that addresses these and other concerns.
Getting those government bodies that do want to withhold public information into line is the point of continuing efforts to strengthen public access laws, said Nancy Monson, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.
"It's a shame we even have to have access laws. The Constitution gives us various freedoms of speech and press. Access should be implied in that," she said. "There's nothing more important for citizens than access to government."
Staff writer Jim Day can be reached at 886-3794 or by e-mail at dayj@scripps.com. Staff writer Novelda Sommers contributed to this report.

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