Do Universities Comply With Public Records Laws?
The records maintained by public educational establishments like the University of California all fall under the definition of public records. as provided by respective public records acts, and therefore they should be open for free review by authorized representatives of groups of activists or public organizations concerned.
Anyway, the lawsuit filed this June by a unit of healthcare workers at the University of California against the school’s Board of Regents in Alameda County Superior Court imposes doubts whether the educational establishment’s officials are in compliance with the California public records. laws. The conflict started in October of the last year, when the union announced that they wanted to request certain financial records from the University’s campuses to monitor how the funds allocated for buying some disposable materials are being spent by officials in charge.
Though not directly refused at a number of campuses, the representatives acting from behalf of the union were asked to pay the total of over $ 6000 in processing fees for the copies they were supposed to get free of charge, while the rest of the campuses just told they kept no records of expenditures of the kind. At least in form of hard copies. Anyway, the California Public Records Act provisions say that any electronic public record should be available for public screening at no cost at all.
The University still maintains they did their best to comply with the provisions currently in effect, but the number of the records requested by the Union had exceeded any reasonable volume, plus there is no standard for the said records, which means it was only up to campus in which format they should have been maintained. The University’s high ranking official insists the lawsuit is frivolous and says the defendant is resolute to fight it in the court vigorously.