Opinion ID: 2467190
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Foundation's Application

Text: The Foundation contends that the Court of Civil Appeals erred in holding that the trial court erroneously suppressed the Board's interrogatories. While denying that it intends to use the information which it seeks for any illegal or discriminatory purpose, the Foundation argues that the Act itself prohibits any consideration of the motives or purposes for which the information is sought in determining whether the information is public and open to inspection. The purpose of the Open Records Act is declared in Section 1 as follows: Pursuant to the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government which holds to the principle that government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them, it is hereby declared to be the public policy of the State of Texas that all persons are, unless otherwise expressly provided by law, at all times entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and employees. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created. To that end, the provisions of this Act shall be liberally construed with the view of carrying out the above declaration of public policy. Section 3 requires that a governmental body make all public information ... available to the public during normal business hours .... [2] Section 3(a) defines public information as [a]ll information collected, assembled, or maintained by governmental bodies pursuant to law or ordinance or in connection with the transaction of official business ..., with the following exceptions only : ...; there follow 16 exceptions, after which Section 3(b) provides: This section does not authorize withholding of information or limit the availability of records to the public, except as specifically stated in this section.  Section 5(a) denominates the chief administrative officer of the governmental body as the custodian of its public records, and Section 5(b) provides: Neither the custodian nor his agent who controls the use of public records shall make any inquiry of any person who applies for inspection or copying of public records beyond the purpose of establishing proper identification and the public records being requested ; ... Finally, Section 14 provides, in part: (a) This Act does not prohibit any governmental body from voluntarily making part or all of its records available to the public, unless expressly prohibited by law; provided that such records shall then be available to any person. (b) This Act does not authorize the withholding of information or limit the availability of public records to the public, except as expressly so provided.       (d) This Act shall be liberally construed in favor of the granting of any request for information.