Clerk of the Board and PRAs

The Clerk of the Board Legislative Committee is currently reviewing AB 169 by Assemblymember Brian Maienschein of San Diego, which would amend the California Public Records Act.

The bill would require a local public agency, except a school district, that posts a public record on the Web to post the record in an “open file format” that meets the following requirements:

• It is retrievable, downloadable, indexable, and electronically searchable by commonly used Internet search applications;
• It is platform independent and machine readable.
• It is available to the public free of charge and without any restriction that would impede the reuse or redistribution of the public record; and
• It retains the data definitions and structure present when the data was compiled, if applicable.

The bill currently is awaiting hearing in the Assembly Local Government Committee.

The legislative committee is closely examining the bill’s requirements and is considering whether to take a position on the bill. Committee member René LaRoche of Mariposa County has raised the question of whether the bill needs to be amended to only apply to records posted on-line as of the effective date of the bill or some other reasonable date certain by which time counties can comply with its provisions. René points out that some counties, including Mariposa, currently post records that may not be searchable (e.g., some scanned records).