The UC-Davis Pepper Spray Incident and the UCLA Hotel Seem to Raise the Same Question
The pepper spray incident at UC-Davis and the proposed UCLA hotel/conference center matter seem to raise a common question:
Do we have a problem – systemwide and on campus – about responding to Public Records Act requests?
An earlier post noted the long delay in providing the UCLA Faculty Association with the business plan for the proposed hotel/conference center. The Faculty Association still has not received the consulting report that was supposed to be the back-up support for the plan. Presumably, that report was available well before the Feb. 9, 2012 date the plan itself was approved. And we did not get the plan itself until it appeared on the Regents website earlier this week and well after Feb. 9. Read on:
The University of California is violating state law by refusing to release portions of an investigative report on a police officer’s pepper-spraying of Occupy protesters, public-records experts said Wednesday. An Alameda County judge ruled this week that the university could release all but a few sections of the report to the public. But UC lawyers refused to release the document to this newspaper, which had requested it under the California Public Records Act. The state law requires public agencies such as the UC to provide most documents upon request. The university provided two disparate explanations for the denial, each of which open-government advocates criticized.
In an email, UC attorney Stella Ngai said “the documents originally requested have now been altered into a form that no longer represents a final version.” She did not explain how the document had been altered, and she did not give a legal citation for the refusal…
Full article at http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_20226299/uc-violates-law-delaying-pepper-spray-report-release
Basically, when you file a public records request, it’s hard to get satisfaction. Wasn’t there a song about that?:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx0bLBk-BNM&w=320&h=195]