College Station ORR Process Overview
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Open Records Request Process
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College Station ORR Process Overview
- 1. City of College Station Open Records Request Process November 23, 2020
- 2. • Gives the public the right to request access to government information • Includes information that is written, produced, collected, assembled or maintained • Ability to seek opinion from the Attorney General • Allows City to recover costs related to reproducing public information Texas Public Information Act
- 3. Request received via pubrequest@cstx.gov CSO routes to appropriate department(s) Information deemed public released to requestor City Attorney’s Office reviews for applicable PIA exceptions If no PIA exception applies, information is released to requestor If PIA exception, request for ruling from Texas AG If AG concludes information is public, it is released to requestor (with redactions, if applicable) AG concludes information is not public and therefore not released Note: Release of public information may require additional labor, materials, or programming on behalf of City staff and at expense of the requestor Council Priority: Good Governance College Station ORR Process
- 4. College Station ORR Process • Impact on staff resources o In 2020, 85 City staff members assisted with ORRs in some manner o Time spent on open records is equivalent to 7 FTE’s o City departments most impacted: 1) CSPD, 2) CSO, 3) Legal, and 4) P&DS • City currently releases almost all records electronically, resulting in little additional material costs to the City
- 5. 2020 ORR Data (through October) • 1,096 individual ORRs filed, generating 1,502 department requests o Average per month: 150 157 164 168 147 153 140 142 140 137 154 130 147 163 Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct 84.6% 9.6% 4.1% 1.7% 1 request 2 requests 3-5 requests >5 requests
- 6. 2020 ORR Data (through October) 828 204 163 76 49 39 35 32 30 20 10 8 4 3 1 Police P&DS Fire Fiscal Services Community Services Human Resources Water Public Works CSO CMO Electric Parks Public… IT Legal Total Department Requests: 1,502
- 7. Historical Trends 429 744 1,020 1,111 1,231 1,502 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 (thru Oct) Total ORRs 73% 138% 159% 187% 250% 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 (thru Oct) Percentage Increase of 2015 ORRs
- 8. ORRs for CSPD and BPD 696 357 769 821 1113 947 0 300 600 900 1200 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020+ 0 225 450 675 900 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020+ College Station Bryan City of Bryan – Total ORRs 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020+ College Station 134 303 365 434 597 828 Bryan 275 141 344 414 420 527 ORRs in other Texas Cities
- 9. ORRs in other Texas Cities City Population Year ORRs Program Notes City of Georgetown 66,804 2020 2,493 GovQA PD included City of Pflugerville 64,431 2020 1,745 GovQA Anticipate 2,000 in FY21 City of Wylie 51,585 2020 627 Hybrid of Gov’t Outreach PD not included in total City of Galveston 50,457 2020 1,600 GovQA --- City of Athens 12,797 2020 197 --- --- City of Los Fresnos 7,883 2020 449 JustFOIA --- City of Richardson 120,981 2019 5,034 GovQA PD included City of North Richland Hills 70,836 2019 508 GovQA PD not included in total City of Sachse 26,122 2019 652 Online form/manual --- City of Alice 19,987 2019 343 --- PD not included in total
Editor's Notes
- The PIA declares that as a matter of public policy, people are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and official acts. The PIA gives the public the right to request access to government information and makes all “public information” open to the public unless the information is specifically excepted from disclosure by the PIA or other law. It includes information that is written, produced, collected, assembled, or maintained under a law or ordinance or in connection with the transaction of official business by a governmental body. Things like contracts, email correspondence, police reports, budgets, and other financial information. If a governmental body wishes to withhold requested information from public release, the governmental body is required to seek an Attorney General’s decision on whether the requested information is exempt from disclosure. The PIA allows the City to recover costs related to reproducing public information. A request for copies may generally be assessed charges for labor, overhead (which is calculated as a percentage of the total labor), and materials.
- Once a request is received, the CSO routes the request to the City Attorney’s Office as well as the appropriate City department(s). The City department gathers all responsive information. All information deemed public is released from the department to the requestor. Any information not deemed public is sent to the City Attorney’s Office where it will be reviewed for release. If an applicable PIA exception exists, the City Attorney’s Office will request a letter ruling from the Texas Attorney General’s Office requesting the information be withheld. The City Attorney’s Office will contact the requestor regarding its intent to withhold the information. If the City Attorney’s Office determines requested information to be public, or in the event the Attorney General concludes requested information is public, the City department will be notified to release the information directly to the requestor or if redactions are needed the City Attorney’s Office will redact and release the information directly to the requestor. Release of public information may require additional labor, materials, or programming on behalf of City staff and at the expense of the requestor; however, information is released electronically when available at no cost. Requests primarily involve executed contracts, property information, and police reports that have concluded. This process is in place not only to comply with State requirements, but also because we want to operate in a transparent manner and be open to scrutiny by the public. As a reminder, Council annually adopts a Strategic Plan to establish core goals and objectives. One such goal is “Good Governance,” in which the City strives to operate in a [QUOTE] “transparent, efficient, accountable, and responsive manner on behalf of its citizens that actively promotes citizen involvement.” Common exceptions: Information dealing with the detection, investigation, or prosecution of a crime Interagency and intraagency communications Attorney-client privilege Information related to competition or bidding if it would harm the city’s interests
- A recent request from our Legal Department to determine how much each City department processes showed that 85 City staff members assisted with ORRs in some manner. The accumulated percentage of those staff members’ reported time equates to approximately 7 full-time employees’ time per year spent on open records. This calculation is only an estimate and is based on each department’s (excluding one small department) self-reported number of staff and each staff member’s percentage of time spent processing ORRs. The City departments impacted most by ORRs are (1) CSPD, (2) CSO, (3) Legal, and (4) P&DS. In addition to staff costs, the City incurs costs for supplies that can be charged to the requestor in certain situations. If costs are incurred, the City seeks reimbursement from the requestor. However, the City currently releases almost all records electronically resulting in little cost to the City. By and large, this remains a manual process. ORRs have increased significantly over the last several years. In 2014, the City averaged fewer than 30 ORRs per month. If the current request trend continues, the City will finish the year at a record high averaging over 100 ORRs per month. As these numbers have increased, so has the City staff time needed to sufficiently process these requests.
- Through October, there have been 1,096 individual ORRs filed in 2020. (10 months of data) A single request may involve multiple departments. That comes to an average of about 150 department requests per month. In 2020, we had a high of 168 in March and a low of 137 in September. The overwhelming number of ORRs that come in are from individuals with a single request – about 85%. Only 1.7% of those filing ORRs in 2020 have filed more than 5 over the year. The requests come most often from law offices, law enforcement and the military, and state agencies. About 5% of requests come from law offices.
- Of those 1,502 department requests, 828 of those were for our Police Department – over half of all requests. Fiscal Services includes Finance, Budget, Purchasing, Municipal Court, & Utility Customer Service Public Works includes Streets, Drainage, GIS, and Traffic Systems CMO includes Economic Development, Neighborhood Services, and CIP
- Total ORRs reflects the total number of department requests handled through our ORR process. 2015 429 YoY Since 2015 2016 744 73% 73% 2017 1,020 37% 138% 2018 1,111 9% 159% 2019 1,231 11% 187% 2020 1,502 22% 250% (3 ½ times the number from 2015 – and again, only 10 months of data) Historical: 2012 198 2013 232 2014 279 Increase of 627% since 2012.
- Are our high numbers of requests in recent years emblematic of a broader trend? Here is a look at requests from the City of Bryan. You can see a growing number of PD-related requests over the last several years. A decade ago, Bryan had just 293 total requests. Note: Our PD requests are rising too: 2015, 134; 2016, 303; 2017, 365; 2018, 434; 2019, 597; 2020+, 828 The graph on the right-hand side shows the total number of Open Records Requests received by the City of Bryan since 2015.
- Staff in the City Secretary’s Office reached out within their municipal clerks’ network, and we received 2019 & 2020 data from several cities across Texas. The totals often don’t include requests specific to their respective police departments. The requests for Police are not reflected in North Richland Hills, Wylie (PD averages 50/week), and Alice. But PD remains a large chunk of any City’s ORRs. For example, the City of Richardson had an additional 3,743 ORRs processed through their PD The majority of these listed utilize a formal software program to handle their requests: things such as statutory deadline computation and notification, submission of the request to each department, calculation of statistical data related to ORRs, and the tabulation of fees associated with each request Note: the City received a quote in 2019 for a basic ORR software system at a cost of approximately $12,000.