Legal Group Alleges Riverside’s $100K Public Records Fee Violated State Law

Publisher’s note: Inland Empire Publications, the parent company of The Riverside Record, is set to be a co-plaintiff in the pending lawsuit.

A press right’s legal group said it plans to sue Riverside, alleging the city violated state’s public records law after the city would not budge on charging a journalist over $100,000 to obtain police use of force and misconduct documents from 124 investigations.

“The reason we’re fighting for this is for the public,” Susan Seager, a law professor and head of the Press Freedom Project at University of California, Irvine, said. “The public should be able to get public records without having to fork over $1,000 or $100,000.”

The decision to move forward with litigation came days after the Riverside City Council, during a closed session meeting May 5, reviewed an April 21 letter sent by Seager. 

In the letter, Seager alleged that the city’s fee of $106, 965.75 to procure documents violated portions of the California Public Records Act (CPRA). She also outlined how her team had won a similar case against the city of San Joaquin days prior and requested a revised list of fees. 

The city’s public information officer Phil Pitchford told The Riverside Record he could not share additional information regarding the council’s closed session discussion. However, Deputy City Attorney Jacob Guerard emailed Seager last week to inform her the council declined to submit a revised list of fees. 

Seager’s decision to move forward with litigation was the result of a monthslong back and forth with the city after journalist Katey Rusch was told last year it would cost $106,965.75 to get copies of all disclosable records regarding officer use of force and misconduct between 2014 to 2023. 

Rusch, who filed the request on behalf of the University of California, Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program as part of its public database, said other California-based agencies had not charged her at all, with some only requesting minimal fees to pay for printing costs. 

“I was really shocked when I saw that request for that dollar amount,” Rusch said. “We really don’t spend more than $800 a year to get access to these records.”

Seager first sent a letter to the city in early-February, on Rusch’s behalf, alleging the documents’ price tag and the implementation of local fees to procure public records violated portions of the CPRA that only allow cities to charge for the direct cost of duplication. 

Seager’s letter also said the state law restricted agencies from charging for ancillary tasks such as retrieval, handling of files and staff time spent searching for the records, adding that the city failed to explain how the fees reflected the direct cost. 

Seager told The Record duplication fees were typically to offset the cost of printing, but much of that cost has been eliminated as more documents became available in digital form. She added the law does contain a carve-out for statutory fees, but argued that only the state can create statutes and not cities.

Guerard, in a letter response, refuted Seager’s claims. He said there was no evidence presented to show the city was charging more than the cost of duplication, and added that some of the cost of producing electronic records came from the need to extract files from proprietary software and convert them into a format that could be disclosed to the public. 

He also argued the California Constitution allowed cities the power to enact legislation, like setting its own local fees, within the boundaries of its own jurisdiction. 

“The power to impose regulatory fees is not dependent on legislatively authorized taxing power but exists under the police power conferred to municipalities,” Guerard said in the February 19 letter. “There is no inherent conflict between the city’s schedule of fees and the [CPRA].”