Oklahoma bill would require deadline for public bodies respond to open records requests
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — A bill making its way through the Oklahoma State Legislature would update Oklahoma’s Open Records act to require public bodies to respond to open records requests within 10 days.
The law would be similar to open records laws already on the books in every state bordering Oklahoma.
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House Bill 2730, authored by Rep. Annie Menz (D-Norman) and Senator Julia Kirt (D-Oklahoma City) would add new language to the Oklahoma Open Records Act, requiring public bodies subject to the act to respond to any open records request within 10 days of receiving it.
It wouldn’t require a public body to fulfill a request within the 10 days, but would require a public body to give the person requesting the records an estimate of how long it will take to fulfill the request.
“If a records request cannot be completed within ten (10) business days of the request, a person designated pursuant to paragraph 7 of this section shall provide written notice to the requestor indicating the reason for the delay and specifying a date within a reasonable time when the information requested will be available for inspection or duplication,” the bills proposed updated language says.
The Oklahoma Open Records Act allows citizens to view or inspect any records belonging to a public body—unless the records fall under a few confidentiality exceptions.
Police reports, expense reports, emails and texts sent by public officials, department payrolls, court filings, contracts and surveillance video are just a few examples of the many things public bodies are required to make available if a member of the public requests it.
Currently, Oklahoma’s Open Records Act only requires a public body to respond to an open records request in a “reasonable” amount of time. It does not set any hard deadlines for public bodies to produce requested records.
“There’s really no teeth in the Open Records Act whatsoever,” said Randy Carter with the group Oklahomans for Responsible Transportation.
Carter said it once took the state 14 months to respond to one of his group’s open records requests. The state ended up giving them the records just days before Oklahomans for Responsible Transportation was set to make arguments before the Oklahoma Supreme Court as part of their lawsuit over several planned turnpikes.
“The Supreme Court made a ruling that came out against us,” Carter said. “But interestingly enough, three days before that ruling was released by the Supreme Court, we received information that had been requested 14 months before that we feel possibly it might not have made a difference in the verdict, but it certainly would have made a difference in the way we had presented the information to the Supreme Court dealing with the turnpikes.”
“Our Open Records Act is pretty ambiguous,” Senator Kirt said. “It really leaves open what is reasonable. And other states have very clear definitions of what’s reasonable.”
She says she co-authored HB 2730 in hopes it could take away the guesswork public bodies currently leave to citizens when it comes to how long it may take to fulfill an open records request.
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“[HB 2730] doesn’t leave it up to the citizen to figure out how long it’s going to take. Right now, our system relies on citizens filing lawsuits to figure out what’s reasonable,” she said. “[Under HB 2730], somebody could send an email or they could send a letter saying, ‘hey, we can’t complete that, It’s going to take us six months or it’s going to take us two months,’ whatever that timeline is. They need to be able to give that to people so they can know when to expect that record.”
The requirements proposed in HB 2730 would be less strict than open records laws already in place in Oklahoma’s neighboring states.
Colorado, New Mexico, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas all require public bodies respond to open records requests within three business days.
Texas requires a response within 10 business days.
Some of those states even require a public body to produce the records within that timeframe. Kirt said she considered including similar language in HB 2730, but ultimately chose to leave it out after hearing some concerns from leaders in small towns.
“There’s been some worries that it’s going to push entities that don’t have the staff to get those records released in time,” Kirt said. “But [HB2730] is actually requiring just a notice. It doesn’t require that it be completed in that timeline.”
As of Monday, HB 2730 has passed the Oklahoma House of Representatives, as well as the Senate committees it needed to pass for the Senate to take a vote on it.
In order for that vote to happen, Senate leaders will have to choose to send it to the Senate floor within the next couple weeks. If they do not choose to do that, the bill will die.
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