By Robert Haugh

Yesterday, the City put all its California Public Records Acts (CPRA) requests online so the community can see how many public records requests the City responds to monthly.

 This summer, the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury body slammed the City for being slow to respond to PRAs.  But the City reversed the move by pointing out that the Civil Grand Jury didn’t do enough homework. If they did, they would have learned that the City gets way more requests each month than other cities — like 20 times more than Sunnyvale.

Now, we get to see all of the requests at this site.

According to the City’s press release: 

The searchable archive will contain CPRA requests starting from today’s date and will grow as the City receives future requests. A summary of closed public records requests, submitted to the City since January 2019, are also available online.

The site also makes it easier to request info with an online form. Kudos to City staff for doing this work. 

My Experience

I made eight CPRAs this year which shows up in the database. The City has been pretty good about responding in a timely manner to most of them. 

However, two requests turned up nothing.  Both times the City said the 49ers would not give them info.  One was a request for the contract that 49ers Stadium Manager Jim Mercurio illegally approved for VenueNext when he had stock in the company.  The other was for the lease with for Bourbon Steak & Pub the stadium restaurant which the 49ers co-own but never told the City about. 

That’s interesting because the City says the 49ers have been eating up a lot of staff time with CPRA requests for City information. It’s probably worth a closer look at what the team and other people are requesting. That’ll be the subject of another story.