Aren Cambre's Praxis Research

My response to Lyn:

Lynn,

Please reference Texas Attorney General Open Records Opinion OR2010-08825 (link). This was an opinion issued about someone else’s open records request to League City (SE of Houston) about their red light camera program.

The TAG’s opinion states:

• “Gov't Code § 552.002(a). Whether information prepared by a private party on behalf of a governmental body is in the physical custody of a governmental body is not determinative of whether the information is subject to the Act.”
• “The test for whether the Act applies to information held by outside parties is whether: (1) the information relates to the governmental body's official duties or business; (2) the consultant acts as agent of the governmental body in collecting the information; and (3) the governmental body has or is entitled to access to the information. … We find the detection and citation of individuals for violations of the city's traffic laws, which are services Redflex provides pursuant to its contract with the city, are law enforcement activities traditionally carried out by governmental bodies. Thus, in performing these law enforcement functions, Redflex is providing services that would otherwise be undertaken by the city as part of its official duty of law enforcement. Accordingly, we conclude the photographs are collected and maintained by Redflex as an agent for the city and in connection with the city's official business.”

This would appear to establish that it is in fact appropriate for me to request this data directly from Cedar Hill. Further, as stated earlier, ATS is not subject to the Texas Public Information Act (TPIA), so it is not possible for me to satisfy this request by directly discussing this with ATS.

I realize that this may be a novel request for Cedar Hill. I want to help you make this simple in any reasonable way I can, but that can only happen in the context of Cedar Hill acknowledging and “owning” the responsibility to work with ATS to fulfill this request. I would be happy to discuss with ATS directly but only after you have cleared with ATS my right to access this data and affirmed ATS’s willingness to produce it.

If at this point you disagree with my interpretation of my rights under the TPIA, the best thing to do is to claim one or more exceptions under Subchapter C of Chapter 552, Government Code and submit this claim to the Texas Attorney General’s Open Records Division. The process is described in §552.301 (“Request for Attorney General Decision”) (link). Note that a copy of your letter to the Texas Attorney General must be furnished to me.

Feel free to call or email if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Aren
214-XXX-XXXX

I wrote back to Lyn with these points:

• The data omits a lot of important details.
• Request to have the vendor re-run the query and include more fields.
• I would be happy to work with ATS directly but need Lyn to explicitly authorize this with ATS staff.

Lyn Hill asked for time frame and if I can accept redacted data. I said I need license plate details and that I want all violations.

Thank you letters sent to Cedar Hill staff.

All records recieved.

More sample data sent.

Provided with sample data.

Email records request to Lyn Hill, City Secretary.