Existing law, the California Public Records Act, requires each state or local agency, upon a request for a copy of records that reasonably describes an identifiable record or records, to make the records promptly available to any person upon payment of fees covering direct costs of duplication, or a statutory fee if applicable, except with respect to public records exempt from disclosure by express provisions of law.
This bill would require, if a single request exceeds 2 hours of search time, or if the total requests by a requestor exceed 10 hours of search time in one month, the requestor to also submit to the agency a payment of fees in an amount determined by the agency as reasonable to compensate the agency for the administrative time of completing the requests. The bill would exempt from that requirement a journalist, a newspaper, and an educational or noncommercial scientific institution, as specified. The bill would define "search" for purposes of that requirement to mean to review, either manually or by automated means, agency records for the purpose of locating those records that are responsive to a request.
Existing law requires each agency, within 10 days of a request for a copy of records, to determine whether the request seeks copies of disclosable public records in possession of the agency and to promptly notify the person of the determination and the reasons therefor. Existing law authorizes that time limit to be extended by no more than 14 days under unusual circumstances, as defined.
This bill would instead require each agency to determine whether the request seeks copies of disclosable public records in possession of the agency and to promptly notify the person as described above within 10 business days of a request for a copy of records. The bill would instead authorize the time period for each agency to respond to be extended by no more than 14 business days.
The California Constitution requires local agencies, for the purpose of ensuring public access to the meetings of public bodies and the writings of public officials and agencies, to comply with a statutory enactment that amends or enacts laws relating to public records or open meetings and contains findings demonstrating that the enactment furthers the constitutional requirements relating to this purpose.
This bill would make legislative findings to that effect.
Existing constitutional provisions require that a statute that limits the right of access to the meetings of public bodies or the writings of public officials and agencies be adopted with findings demonstrating the interest protected by the limitation and the need for protecting that interest.
This bill would make legislative findings to that effect.

Statutes affected:
AB 1821: 7920.000 GOV
02/11/26 - Introduced: 7920.000 GOV
03/16/26 - Amended Assembly: 7922.530 GOV, 7922.530 GOV, 7922.535 GOV, 7922.535 GOV, 7920.000 GOV