In mid-October, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) released preliminary public records data for the year 2020. 85% of cities submitted responses to JLARC, either providing public record request data or indicating they did not meet
the threshold of $100,000 in public records spending required by law.
The report covers a period of time when city operations were significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these impacts, cities still managed a massive volume of public record requests requiring significant public resources.
In total, reporting cities received 118,622 public records requests. Of those requests, 75,255 were closed or completed within five days. On average, it took just over six days for agencies to complete final disposition.
Cities pushed back on some requests. In total, cities fully denied 2,648 requests and partially denied 31,156 requests.
In responding to public records requests in 2020, cities spent an estimated 386,224 hours or 48,278 workdays. Cities spent roughly $64.5 million on staff compensation, system and service costs, and other services.
The full dataset is available on JLARC’s website.
A more formal report will be available in December of this year.