Texas Preservation Board coughs up records after complaint to state Attorney General

Julie is Julie Fields, public information coordinator for the Preservation Board. I had called her in February asking about what groups who wanted to meet on the grounds of the state Capitol needed to do in the way of permission.

Citizens of the Lone Star State are free to gather or protest on the real estate they pay to maintain pretty much whenever and wherever they want, within reason. Should they need assistance with their gathering, be it audio or visual aids, a podium or a dais, groups are required to fill out a simple, one-page form listing the time, date and place of the gathering, contact information, the name of the sponsoring organization and the name of an elected official acting as an official sponsor. View all of the request forms here.

I wanted to know if the Preservation Board published these request forms on its website. I told Fields my intention was to see just who all those people you see during the session were, spend the day talking to some of them and to write a story about it.

At her suggestion, I made my request in the form required by the Texas Public Information Act and e-mailed it to the records request address on the board’s website. State law says agencies must provide records promptly, but in practice many wait 10 business days because that’s the deadline to challenge the request to the attorney general.

On March 11, nearly a month later, the board sent some of the documents. While my request seemed to make clear that I wanted all request forms that had been filed at the time I made my request, what I got were requests for events that occurred through the date of my request, not future events whose request had also been filed.

Fields apologized with an e-mail that said it might take several days to round up the rest of the requests. Fifteen days after getting my partial request, I inquired about the rest of the drop.

And a month later, on April 12, I wrote to Fields apologizing for being a pest, reminding her of what the law says about open records and telling her that the pressure from my editor was killing me.

The following day I called Tom Kelley, a public information officer with the Attorney General’s office. I told him everything that had happened. I told him I didn’t want to crack down on the Preservation Board. I just wanted my documents.

After consulting with an assistant attorney general, I filed a formal complaint on April 13. While the Attorney General is under no time constraint for processing complaints, I asked for a status report on Monday.

Kelley said the delivery of my complaint was to be made that very day. After the surprise delivery of the rest of my documents early that afternoon, I asked Kelley if any reason had been given for the delay. After all, the requests are public. The information on them could not be less sensitive.

Kelley didn’t have an answer, and I certainly know enough not to wait around for one from the Preservation Board.

Still, if a reporter has to go to the Attorney General to get documents that are legally available to everyone I wonder how the Preservation Board treats requests from people who don’t make them for a living.

Photo of Texas state Capitol dome by flickr user coffee is for closers, used via a Creative Commons license.