The Public Information Act includes several strong presumptions in favor of openness. Under the Act, any person may ask a governmental body for information, and the governmental body may not ask the purpose of the request.¹⁶ The Act deems every government document open unless it falls within one of the Act's exceptions or is confidential under other state law.¹⁷ Once a request is filed, the governmental body must promptly release the information or-if it thinks the information must be withheld-forward the request to the Attorney General for an opinion (unless the AG ruled the same information confidential in a previous open records opinion). The Attorney General acts as an independent arbiter of disputes over access-government officials may not make the final determination over records they wish to keep secret, except under limited circumstances.¹⁸ Finally, the Act sets out criminal penalties for its violation.¹⁹

Despite this clear framework favoring public access, the Act concedes that certain government information must be confidential-at least for short periods of time-either to protect personal privacy or to ensure that government officials can do their jobs. For that reason, the Act exempts numerous types of information from public disclosure: bids during the government procurement process; personnel information that would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy; information relating to litigation that should be obtained through the discovery process; information about the location or price of property the government plans to buy; certain geophysical information; student records; birth and death records; prescription information for controlled substances; and more.²⁰

While some of these exceptions are clear and relate to easily identifiable pieces of information (e.g., photos of police officers are confidential except under specific circumstances),²¹ many exceptions are broad and subject to interpretation. For example, the Act excepts from disclosure "information that.an attorney of a political subdivision is prohibited from disclosing because of duty to the client."²² Because a broad interpretation of this exception would allow a governmental body to circumvent the Act by giving everything to its lawyer, the Act requires review by the Attorney General.²³

A governmental body that wants to withhold information under one of the Act's exceptions (other than information that is clearly excepted, always appears in the same form, and requires no interpretation) must file a request for an AG opinion within 10 working days of the request.²⁴ The governmental body then has five additional working days to formulate arguments and file copies of the information for review by the AG.²⁵ The requester also may make arguments, and if the information relates to a third party, the AG solicits comment from that party as well (although the Act does not require it to do so).²⁶

The AG has 60 working days-and may use an additional 20 working days-to determine whether the information is open or closed. A ruling may take the form of an open records decision (ORD), "which is a formal opinion on a novel or problematic legal question and is signed by the Attorney General," or an open records letter (ORL), which is "based on established law and practice and is signed by an assistant Attorney General."²⁷ ORDs, which include a public comment period, receive the most publicity, but "informal open records rulings [ORLs] comprise the bulk of the [AG's] ever-increasing workload."²⁸ This independent AG opinion process is a key element that makes the Texas PIA stronger than the federal Freedom of Information Act-and gives citizens the tools to make Texas government substantially more open.²⁹

The Attorney General enforces the act, primarily by filing a suit for a writ of mandamus compelling a governmental body to make information available (see stories, pages 10-11). Individual requesters also can enforce the Act by filing a mandamus suit to compel disclosure or by persuading the local district attorney to file criminal charges. ³⁰ Public officials are subject to criminal penalties for destroying, mutilating or altering public documents, for distributing confidential information, or for failing "with criminal negligence" to provide access to public information.³¹

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