Opinion ID: 1122988
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The UIPA requires government agencies to provide access to records within their possession and control.

Text: In its order granting summary judgment to SPJ, the circuit court ruled that the HPD has an obligation to maintain such records in retrievable format[,] and that, [i]f an agency of State Government, as defined in the UIPA, has a duty to maintain records and to disclose information in those records, then the agency cannot attempt to pass the expenses of maintaining and disclosing those records on to requesters nor can it complain if it incurs expenses to comply with requests from the public that necessitate the segregation and/or assembly of records or information that the agency should have segregated earlier. The court thus ordered the City to produce all documents responsive to SPJ's August 30, 1993 request. SPJ's original request covered a span of five-and-a-half years and sought disciplinary records of both police officers and other HPD employees. The City argues that, because HPD had no central file for disciplinary records and the computer system it was developing to store and retrieve this type of information was not yet operational, compliance with SPJ's August 30, 1993 request would have required a manual search of the individual personnel records of approximately two thousand active HPD employees as well as of those who had left the department during the relevant time period. Even assuming it was required to undertake such a search, which the City maintains it was not, compliance with SPJ's request was nevertheless impossible because the only documents that conclusively showed whether misconduct had occurred while police officers were acting in their capacities as police officers were the investigative reports of the Internal Affairs Division (IAD), which are only retained for thirty months. We agree that summary judgment was improperly granted with respect to SPJ's August 30, 1993 request because whether the HPD had retained possession of the responsive records is, at the least, a disputed issue of material fact. The circuit court's order requiring the HPD to comply with SPJ's August 30, 1993 request was apparently based on the conclusion that the UIPA imposes a duty to maintain or retain records, as opposed to disclosing them, and further dictates the format in which they must be maintained. Such a conclusion, however, finds no support in the plain language of the statute. The affirmative responsibility imposed on agencies by the UIPA is to make government records available for inspection and copying during regular business hours, upon request by any person. HRS 92F-11(b) (1993). Government record, as stated, means any information maintained by an agency in physical form. Therefore, the UIPA requires agencies to provide access to those records that are actually maintained, but nowhere imposes an affirmative obligation to maintain records. The United States Supreme Court, interpreting the federal FOIA in Kissinger v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 445 U.S. 136, 100 S.Ct. 960, 63 L.Ed.2d 267 (1980), reached the same conclusion. Most courts which have considered the question have concluded that the FOIA is only directed at requiring agencies to disclose those agency records for which they have chosen to retain possession or control. See also NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U.S. 214, 221, 98 S.Ct. 2311, 2316, 57 L.Ed.2d 159 (1978), describing the Act as reaching records and material in the possession of federal agencies.... The conclusion that possession or control is a prerequisite to FOIA disclosure duties is reinforced by an examination of the purposes of the Act. The Act does not obligate agencies to create or retain documents; it only obligates them to provide access to those which it in fact has created and retained. Id. at 151-52, 100 S.Ct. at 969 (footnotes and some citations omitted) (ellipses in original). Nothing in the UIPA requires the HPD to retain records of police officer misconduct for any specified period. However, if the IAD investigative reports are actually retained for only thirty months, then it would be indeed impossible for the HPD to provide access to such records dating back to 1988. Therefore, the extent of HPD's possession and control of records responsive to SPJ's August 30, 1993 request is a genuine issue of material fact, which cannot be resolved on the record before us. As SPJ points out, the City did not claim, in opposition to SPJ's motion for summary judgment, that compliance with SPJ's August 30, 1993 request was impossible because the HPD did not retain possession of the relevant investigatory reports. Impossibility could, arguably, have been inferred from HPD's response to the OIP's inquiry, which was attached to HPD's memorandum in opposition to SPJ's motion for summary judgment. Although HPD's response stated that investigative reports are retained only for thirty months, it did not point out the significance of those reports. HPD's September 7, 1993 response to SPJ's August 30, 1993 request indicated HPD's willingness to provide the information if SPJ paid for its search time. The City nowhere explains how SPJ's payment of $20,000 would make the impossible possible. Moreover, we are unable to ascertain on this record how, and to what extent, HPD was able to comply with the court's December 6, 1994 order compelling it to release to SPJ all records requested in its original August 30, 1993 letter, with only the names of the police officers excluded. What is apparent from the record is that the HPD had documents that were at least partially responsive to SPJ's request, which it did not disclose. In its October 28, 1993 request, which expressly amended the earlier request, SPJ sought access to disciplinary records only of police officers, as opposed to all HPD employees, and only back as far as January 1, 1991, a period of less than thirty-five months. HPD never responded to this request, although it is undisputed that the bulk of the information responsive to this request was in the investigatory reports maintained in the IAD files. We therefore hold that the circuit court erroneously ordered HPD to comply with SPJ's August 30, 1993 request because whether HPD was in possession of the records responsive to that request was a genuine issue of material fact. However, because that request was expressly amended by the October 28, 1993 request and because the records sought by the latter request were indisputedly within HPD's possession, we further hold that it was the October 28, 1993 request that was operative.