Cerritos Library during Christmas. CC-BY-SA 3.0, from AllyUnion (Wikimedia Commons).
Cerritos Library during Christmas. CC-BY-SA 3.0, from AllyUnion (Wikimedia Commons).

UPDATE, 13 April 2023: The City has provided the records. It provided them two days beyond the last day to provide them, so it is still a Public Records Act violation; it also did not provide anything close to the records requested, but rather an entirely separate category of records. The records disclosed will still be provided on the OIC page. This article has also been amended to list Elise Camacho’s position correctly; it was previously listed as her Transparent California-provided position (as of pay year 2021) of “Secretary/Receptionist”, which does not appear to be currently correct.

This article was originally published April 12, 2023.

CERRITOS, California. (OIC) The Open Information Collective has observed the City Clerk’s office at the City of Cerritos committing a California Public Records Act (CPRA) violation. FM Amy Parker filed a CPRA request with the City of Cerritos on April 1, 2023, seeking a list of public comments the City had received regarding the West Santa Ana Branch (WSAB) LA Metro project. On April 11, 2023, she followed up with a phone call to the City Clerk’s office. In this phone call, she spoke with Deputy City Clerk/Records Coordinator Elise Camacho, who admitted to several California Public Records Act violations:

  1. Even though the City Clerk’s office received the request on April 1, they were only counting the date of receipt as April 3, as April 1 was on the weekend.
  2. If the last legal date of disclosure they had determined was on a weekend or a holiday, they would allow themselves to disclose it after the weekend/holiday had passed.

Those two mean that they are using business days, not literal days, for Public Records Act requests. The CPRA does not itself use business days:

(a) Each agency, upon a request for a copy of records, shall, within 10 days from receipt of the request, determine whether the request, in whole or in part, seeks copies of disclosable public records in the possession of the agency and shall promptly notify the person making the request of the determination and the reasons therefor. If the agency determines that the request seeks disclosable public records, the agency shall also state the estimated date and time when the records will be made available.

CA GOV sec. 7922.535(a), fmr. 6253(c)

The Open Information Collective also isn’t the only ones who’ve had trouble with the City of Cerritos on the matter. In one of their reporting stories about the WSAB Project, the Los Cerritos News wrote:

Cerritos has refused to provide public documents to LCCN several times

Brian Hews, Cerritos’ High Priced Law Firm Not Ready for Prime Time in WSAB Light Rail Lawsuit

The Open Information Collective demands the immediate disclosure of all documents the City is withholding, and a change in their internal policies to properly follow the California Public Records Act.

If you need any help with California Public Records Act requests or searching for public records in any other state or jurisdiction, please feel free to contact the Open Information Collective via our contact page.

By Amy Parker

Founding Member Amy Parker is a computer science student at California State University, Fullerton, and a community advocate for government transparency and LGBTQ+ rights. She uses she/her/hers pronouns. You can contact her at amy@amyip.net or amyipdev@csu.fullerton.edu.

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