How does The Sacramento Bee obtain public records and get answers for you? We have a plan

You may have noticed variations of the phrase “obtained by The Sacramento Bee from a California Public Records Act request” in many of our stories. They surface in stories about police conduct, government actions and court decisions — any topic in almost any public arena.

We want to share with you that these are not random, isolated actions by our reporters, but part of an organized effort to hold accountable those making decisions that affect your lives.

What is the California Public Records Act? It is a 1968 California law that enables anyone to request, analyze and disclose government records, with some exemptions. For us, it is a valuable and critical reporting tool to get answers for you. We don’t look at it as an optional course of action. We look at it as a necessary means of responsible journalism.

Recently, our local news team embarked on a focused and intense initiative to seek meaningful information about public actions though PRAs. For example, reporter Theresa Clift not only chronicles the results of our requests in a story about police records, but also details the difficulties in obtaining them. Her editor, Assistant Managing Editor for Local News Emilie Stigliani, answers questions about how her staff is wading through Public Records Act – PRAs – requests and results.

Why did you decide to launch a PRA campaign?

Stigliani: The Sacramento Bee has a role to play in your daily life by offering stories that provide information that is not readily available. We’re doing the work for you of figuring out what agencies have records that offer insight into how they operate and then writing those requests.

Sure, you could make those requests yourself. And, if you ever want to write one, we’ve got a handful of experts at The Bee who could talk you through strategies for writing successful requests, but the reality is that this sort of work doesn’t fit into most people’s lives.

Most of us living in the U.S. would say that it’s important to keep a check on government, but PRAs are a more specialized form of civic accountability work than, say, voting. Plus, most of you could request records but then would have to find a way to share the information you learn with others to promote civic discussion and action.

We at The Bee have the information-sharing piece locked in. We have a website; we have a newspaper. We have a crew of journalists who know how to make these requests and how to turn them into stories that you hopefully find readable and informative.

This work is most meaningful if it’s done with consistency for both the sake of our own muscle memory around doing these requests and for your sake — so you can rely on us to do this. That’s why we launched this campaign.

What is its scope?

Stigliani: The work of my team focuses on local, which at The Bee means the city and county of Sacramento along with contiguous communities and state entities that operate within the region. The diversity of coverage areas within the local team means that we have requested documents from a number of different governmental entities, including police, firefighters, sheriffs, municipal and regional elected politicians and taxpayer-funded institutions, such as Sacramento State.

I like to keep our scope broad and let reporters learn through their reporting what agencies and issues warrant closer examination. This approach has resulted in the team filing nearly 90 public records requests in the past month.

If you know of an agency and an issue that you think would benefit from public oversight, you can always offer that suggestion to your favorite Sacramento Bee journalist. Alternatively, feel free to send the tip to me (estigliani@sacbee.com), and I’ll connect a reporter to your query.

How have you embarked on it?

Stigliani: The act of filing public records requests is nothing new to journalists at The Bee. What is different is us making a concerted group effort to prioritize these filings across the newsroom.

In some newsrooms, the work of filing public records requests is left to the most seasoned reporters who then turn the responsive records into in-depth stories and projects. At The Bee, the serious work of filing PRAs is shared by all reporters. This approach allows each reporter to bring an accountability framework to their reporting. It sharpens our skills as a team and offers you a breadth of accountability that touches everything from code enforcement to liquor licensing.

This approach requires a bit of coordination. I won’t bore you with the details, but I will say that a shared online spreadsheet lets a group easily update one another on what each person is doing.

Can you give examples of some of the requests we have made?

Stigliani: Filing the requests is a small part of the overall reporting process. The requests must be tracked to ensure that the governmental agency complies with the 10-day window that it has to respond to the request, and then delays and/or assertions that the responsive records are exempt from public view must be overcome. (The law does allow a number of exemptions for records to be kept private, particularly if they reveal personal information related to areas such as medical history.)

A reporter who successfully navigates those hurdles can walk away with documents from which stories are born. I’ll give you a few examples of successful requests that have led to stories.

Clift has published a series of stories about payments the city and the county have made following incidents with police officers and sheriff’s deputies. She has been with The Bee for five years and during that time has filed requests every three months with the city and county for settlement agreements. She has received hundreds of pages that are responsive to these ongoing requests, and their contents have served as fodder for her stories.

Local accountability reporter Ariane Lange wrote a story this past month about what the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office spends on social media management. The story was based on a PRA asking the office for emails and contracts.

State worker reporter Maya Miller wrote a story this past month that revealed employees working at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife are not allowed to charge their electric vehicles at the office. This story was based on a tip that Miller followed with a request to the department for communication regarding their EV chargers.

What have you discovered in this process?

Stigliani: We have discovered patterns in how responsive various agencies are to our PRAs. For example, Clift noted that there was a lag in the responsive documents she received from Sacramento Police Department and Sheriff’s Office when compared to what she received from the city’s Fire Department. That is what led to Clift to write her story about how local law enforcement agencies have narrowly interpreted their legal requirement to make disciplinary documents public.

This process has made clear that our right to public records is one that must be exercised to be maintained. The more we ask those accountable to to you, the taxpayer, for transparency, the more we ensure that we live in a society where that transparency is an expectation of public servants.

And what have been the results so far?

Stigliani: The act of filing public records has pushed our city’s leadership to act with more transparency. I mentioned earlier that Clift has an ongoing practice of requesting settlements. In 2021, she wrote a story about the largest settlement the city had ever paid. She learned of this $11 million payment through a PRA.

Mayor Darrell Steinberg spoke about Clift’s story at the next council meeting and directed his staff to post all settlement agreements online rather than waiting for a PRA to trigger the release of these documents. Soon after, staff to started to post the settlements on the city’s website.

Our team’s new volley of PRAs has many of our reporters engaged with agencies in an effort to sort out what must be made public and what responses merit extensions (such as needing time to gather the documents from various people) or can be flat-out denied. This work requires a close reading of the law that an agency cites when they issue an extension or denial, and it sometimes warrants the involvement of our lawyers.

We have published a small portion of the stories that reporters are actively working to bring you. Our hope is that this ongoing effort allows you to better understand the institutions that are entrusted to serve you. And that you take that information and use to it inform the conversations that you have with your elected representatives.