I think we could keep going.

Yeah, we need to.

So a lot of times I'm just right around the corner here over at the shed.

Yeah.

So it's kind of meeting will come back to order.

Oh, I understand.

Yes.

And we will continue with our lodging, excuse me, with our mandatory training on the open public meetings act by Mr.

Beatty.

Thank you, Chair Higgins.

Um, committee members, Anthony Beattie, Tony Beattie, Senior Deputy City Attorney for Spokane Valley here for the um the moment everyone's been waiting for the uh public records act and OPMA Open Public Meeting Act training, the annual training.

Um this is just background information we've gone through before, but this is a long-standing statute for the public records act.

Uh it was adopted in 1972, and we always start with this strongly worded mandate.

Um essentially, the the people do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them.

That's important because you know, when we're dealing with the public records act and you're dealing with litigation and the public records act, that's what the courts are going to look to.

They they view this very this mandate very broadly, and so when we discuss this, I will discuss it in very broad terms.

The the right of the people to obtain public records is is very broad.

So, what is a public record?

It's um any writing containing information relating to the conduct of government or the performance of any governmental or proprietary function that's owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency, regardless of the physical characteristic of that record.

Okay, so we're we're talking about any writing uh information relating to the conduct of government and the that stuff that is uh prepared, owned, used or retained by the local agency.

So writing again, emails, text messages, posts on social media, metadata, police security video, anything that we use that we have a physical form of is essentially a writing.

Okay.

Um we'll get into whether or not those are available for the public depending on the um uh retention schedule that the state has adopted.

But if we have it and they ask for it, we have to provide it unless there's a an exemption.

Information is not a record, so as I just noted, you know, if we have a physical form of a record or of information, then certainly that's a record.

But if we just have if we know information and they're asking for information, what's the you know, what's your population?

We don't have to provide that.

Of course, we will provide that if someone asks that information, or if they ask who the mayor is or whatever.

Um we we just as a public service, uh, we want to we want to provide as much information as possible to the public.

With regards to relating to government, so it's anything that impacts the actions, processes, and functions of government.

So it's a very broad net.

So that's why you know we start with that broad mandate.

Um anything that we utilize uh to conduct our uh affairs, uh internal, external, those are public records that are relating to government.

Um this includes personal devices, anything on personal devices uh that was created within the scope of employment.

So even if you have a personal cell phone and you're texting someone, or um you have a voicemail for someone relating to city business, that is a public record.

Whether or not you have to retain that public record for any period of time is determined by the retention schedule.

So we'll go over that again later.

Uh there's no constitutional right uh to privacy for public records on par private devices.

Uh we you have to conduct a reasonable search.

If we get a request saying, hey, I want um, you know, uh someone's uh text messages that they've sent about city business, then that person needs to conduct a search on their device, and then we would have them actually sign a declaration saying, I conducted a search, this is how I did the search, this is what I found, I did not find anything, or whatever, and then they sign it.

The best uh practice obviously is do not use your personal phone in connection with city business, don't use personal email, don't use personal computers to draft records and then save them on your personal computer.

Um don't use personal devices to run internet searches for information related to city business.

Anything that we do on those personal computers or devices and that we save and you know we we keep and we've used that's you would have to go back and do a search.

Uh this is mostly related to the city council.

They have a social media policy in their governance manual that encourages council members to communicate directly with citizens, but of course a court could find council member posts regarding city business to be in furtherance of city business, so we you know adhere to that social media policy.

Obviously, LTAC does not have one of those.

I don't think that's gonna be a problem for you all.

We're mandated to adopt rules and enforce those rules related to public records.

Uh the city clerk is our designated public records officer.

Uh online records processing through we we do that through our uh internal or external GovQA system on our website.

Um we also have the retention uh we've adopted the state records retention schedule, and all of that's found in chapter 275 in the SBMC.

Someone can make a request in writing, someone can make a request uh uh verbally, they can um, but they have to provide a reasonable description of what they're asking for so we can locate it.

Uh but the form of the request really does not matter.

So someone, I mean, we've had it before, someone comes to council doing a public comment, they say, I want I want this document.

Well, our city clerk is sitting right there, she writes it down and and it gets to the proper people, and then we we search for that document.

We have to provide a prompt response.

Um, that means within five business days, and in five business days, we have we either have to provide the record, provide a link for the record where it can be located on our website, um, acknowledge the request, give them a reasonable estimate of time that it's gonna take for us to fulfill the fulfill the request, uh, acknowledge we've received the request and request clarification, or ultimately deny the record request.

But uh that last one was is very rare.

Uh normally we would work with the requester to figure out what exactly they're they're asking for.

All right, so only 10 exemptions originally, there's 500.