A state government watchdog group that audited the University of California’s compliance with the state Public Records Act gave failing grades to most campuses, but university officials excoriated the audit’s findings as “deeply flawed.”
Californians Aware – founded in 2002 “to foster the improvement of, compliance with and public understanding and use of, public forum law,” according to the nonprofit organization’s website – assigned failing grades to seven of the 10 UC campuses for not responding promptly to public records requests. UC Berkeley, UC Merced and UC San Diego were the only campuses to avoid failing, receiving grades of C, D and D, respectively.
“The University of California (has) a section on their website … that really pushes the idea of transparency and timely transparency,” said Emily Francke, executive director of the organization and an author of the audit. “I find that ironic given how the campuses performed.”
The audit tested the UC’s responsiveness to public record inquiries, asking for each campus’s chancellor’s contract, statement of economic interest and recent expense reimbursements, among other documents. Each document was chosen because it is known to be public and thus readily available, according to Francke.
Six of the campuses failed to respond within 10 days of the original request as stipulated by the California Public Records Act, according to the audit.
But UC officials said that while they appreciated the exercise of the organization’s audit, the published results do not accurately reflect the performance of each campus.
“The truth is that all of our campuses have been compliant with the law, and were responsive to the blanket requests from this organization,” said UC spokesperson Steve Montiel. “You have to question the validity and fairness of any report that characterizes an entity’s (Public Records Act) compliance as a failure despite the release of records in accordance with the law.”
Francke said that she still has not received all of the requested documents, and she was told that some will not be available until April.
UC officials said parts of the audit’s methodology made compliance with the organization’s standards difficult.
“A 30-day response period is an arbitrary time frame – there is nothing in the (act) that says you must respond within 30 days,” said Cathy Lawhon, interim executive director of communications at UC Irvine. “Their clock was ticking during the holidays when we had a mandatory 12-day campus shutdown.”
The organization also requested statements of economic interest from each campus individually and graded the campus down when it referred the request to the UC Office of the President. But according to UC Santa Barbara Assistant Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs Paul Desruisseaux, these forms are not maintained by individual campuses in accordance with a UC policy. Therefore, campuses should not have been penalized for passing the request on to the office, he said.
However, Francke said that, under the act, requests are not required to be made of the owner of the document being requested. If a campus official has the document on file, the campus is responsible for producing that document – regardless of who the ultimate proprietor of that document is.
The UC receives about 3,000 requests under the act each year, according to Montiel.
Californians Aware also audited the entire California State University system. The average grade for CSU campuses was a B – much higher than the average score of the UC’s campuses.
“The fact that the UC specifically is suggesting that this is going to take much longer than pretty much every other agency out there that we audited is kind of mind-boggling,” Francke said. “If anything, they should be opening up their eyes to take a look around … and try to be open and honest about the fact that if other agencies can do this, then why can’t (they)?”
Damian Ortellado of The Daily Californian contributed to this report.