Fees for public records? A bill could kneecap California transparency laws

A bill winding its way through Sacramento right now would make some of the biggest changes in decades to the California Public Records Act — the 58-year-old state law that guarantees everyone has access to government documents and data.

Proponents argue AB 1821 is necessary to help local governments weather a deluge of burdensome requests that have swamped cities and other local agencies. But the changes it proposes have alarmed First Amendment groups, manynews organizations, and government watchdogs, who worry it will allow officials to delay handing over records and impose financial barriers to information access.

So far, Oakland’s political leaders have backed the bill.

Early last month, the City Council voted unanimously to support it. In late May, East Bay assemblymembers Buffy Wicks and Mia Bonta each voted to advance the bill out of their chamber and onto the state senate. The version of the bill they backed would have made one specific change to the California Public Records Act — giving officials several more days to respond to a records request.

Then last week, the bill’s author, Blanca Pacheco, who represents Downey in Southern California, added several dramatic amendments to the bill.

As it now stands, AB 1821 would give government officials the power to treat some records requests as “commercial” in nature and charge requesters fees. It would also allow local governments to file suit against any requester they believed was operating with “malicious intent.” A judge could then impose fees.

Those fees would cover the time it takes a local government’s staff to find and review public records before handing them over and could be assessed at anywhere from $22 to $66 per hour. They could add up to hundreds or even thousands of dollars for complex requests. Currently, government agencies can only charge fees for the cost of copying records, a charge usually waived when records are provided digitally.

Lastly, the bill would give agencies broad powers to restrict when and how people file public records requests — for example, by only accepting them by phone or email during regular business hours. Oakland and many other local governments currently accept requests 24/7 through an online portal.

All three of these more restrictive measures were present when Pacheco first introduced the bill in February. But her colleagues in the assembly had removed those controversial sections before taking a vote.

“This bill would be a giant step backward on the government transparency and accountability front, putting California among the states that are the worst on access to government records,” David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a free speech group, told The Oaklandside. “It would move California in exactly the wrong direction at exactly the wrong time. With the fundamentals of democracy under regular attack from Washington, the last thing California should do is follow suit.” The First Amendment Coalition has represented The Oaklandside on press freedom issues. Cityside, The Oaklandside’s parent organization, does not weigh in on public policy issues except those that pertain to press freedom; it has taken a position opposing the amended bill.

Pacheco: governments are overwhelmed by records requests

Pacheco said her bill responds to a significant recent increase in the number of records requests cities, counties, and other public agencies are getting. Some of the requests seek such large quantities of records or data that they are overwhelming public servants, she said, and interfering with their other work.

“Some cases span years of records, require review of hundreds of thousands of documents, and take months or longer to complete,” Pacheco said during an April 14 hearing of the assembly’s Judiciary Committee. “My home city of Downey has seen a 73% increase of records requests since 2019.”

The city of Fontana, Pacheco said, was peppered with time-consuming requests by a person who admitted they wanted to “disrupt” city services.

Donald Larkin, a lawyer with Burke Williams and Sorensen, a firm with offices across the state, works with the League of California Cities. He said during an assembly hearing that one person sent a public records request in 2023 to every city in five Bay Area counties asking for all emails sent to all public officials. The requester was going to feed the emails into an artificial intelligence model and sell the AI model back to the cities, said Larkin.

Currently, the law allows government agencies to deny a records request if it would be “unduly burdensome,” meaning it would take up too much time or cost too much money to fulfill. Courts have often sided with governments when someone asks them to go on a so-called “fishing expedition,” looking through thousands of records when the public interest served by doing so isn’t obvious.

Alina Evans, Pacheco’s spokesperson, told The Oaklandside that a 2021 court ruling “constrains what can be covered under those limitations.” In that case, an El Dorado County man’s request turned up 47,000 potentially responsive records. The county objected to having to hand over so many emails, but a judge ruled the request wasn’t overbroad or unduly burdensome.

“Existing law does not address whether taxpayers should bear the full search and review costs when a request is made for private commercial benefit,” Evans said.

But the changes AB 1821 would make to address these issues go too far, opponents of the bill have said. Snyder, of the First Amendment Coalition, called the fees a “direct attack on government transparency laws” in a blog post this week. He said the provision that would let agencies file lawsuits is the most damaging.

“This provision alone makes AB 1821 a nonstarter,” Snyder wrote. “It would be easily weaponized by agencies seeking to thwart transparency and accountability, as has already happened elsewhere in the country.” He said the possibility of being sued will lead to an “intolerable chill on the public exercising its right” to government records.

Oakland leaders also say they’re overwhelmed

Council President Kevin Jenkins, who introduced the Oakland resolution supporting the earlier version of SB 1821, said Oakland’s also been overwhelmed by public records requests.

“It’s very difficult to get through all the requests — it’s unmanageable,” he said. His office is still going through a backlog of requests from the tenure of his predecessor, Loren Taylor, he said.

Jenkins said he would need to review the amendments to Pacheco’s bill before determining whether he still supports it. We sent him and all other Oakland councilmembers information on the new language, but we’ve only heard back from some.

Zac Unger said he’d need more time to look over the details.

When we told him about the proposed fees and court petitions for “malicious” requests, Councilmember Ken Houston said they sounded reasonable. “Regular people” and the news media should be able to access records readily, but “the frivolous ones, the people hiding behind fake emails, the people doing this undercover, sneaky — it should be stopped,” he said.

“It’s costly for my office; some people should burden the cost of that,” Houston said. “The city should be ran like a business.”

Councilmember Charlene Wang said she was wary of leaving it up to public agencies or courts to determine what constitutes “malicious intent.”

Wang hadn’t seen the latest bill language when we spoke, but she said the amended bill sounded like something she’d oppose. With the proposed expansion of powers, public agencies could “weaponize” the Public Records Act, she said.

An investigation by The Oaklandside last year found that Oakland officials, including most councilmembers, regularly violated the Public Records Act.

We looked at 91 records requests we had filed from 2023 through 2025 with current councilmembers and found that in only 13 of those cases had they met the 10-day deadline for letting us know whether they had responsive records. Officials only have to inform a requester by then whether they have records or not; they can take longer to actually provide the documents.

Less than 40% of the requests we’d filed with sitting councilmembers through last October had been fulfilled. Some had been sitting untouched for months or even years.

AB 1821 faces a hearing in the senate

Each time AB 1821 was heard by committees in the assembly, and again when it came to a floor vote, Pacheco signaled to her colleagues that what they were being asked to approve was a “modest change” to records laws — not the far-reaching changes that have alarmed First Amendment advocates.

She also let them know that the bill would change as it advanced.

“The bill is still a work in progress,” she said just before the assembly approved it on May 27.

Once her legislation made it to the senate, Pacheco added the sections allowing governments to determine who is and isn’t a “malicious” or “commercial” requester and to demand fees, and to file lawsuits.

“Senate Judiciary Committee staff were alerted to the direction of the amendments and were aware of what was coming to them,” her staff told The Oaklandside.

We asked assemblymembers Bonta and Wicks about their positions on the bill, including whether they knew the more controversial sections might be added back when it reached the senate.

Daniel McGreevy, Bonta’s spokesperson, said it’s normal for bills to be amended in the senate by their authors after they’ve been approved by the assembly. Legislation that goes this route would still need to return to the assembly for a floor vote, he said, and the assembly-approved language would have to match what the senate approved for the law to make it to the governor’s desk. He did not weigh in on Bonta’s positions on the fees or other significant amendments.

Wicks’ office did not respond to queries.

___

This story was originally published by The Oaklandside and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.