Last week, Governor Newsom signed into law SB 94 as part of
the new State Budget. SB 94 cleans up ambiguity found in amendments to the California
Public Records Act (“CPRA”) which are set to go into effect today.
Starting today (July
1, 2019) government agencies must begin disclosing audio and video
recordings from use of forces and officer involved shootings. Under the
original amendments to the CPRA, an agency may withhold a recording if the
disclosure would violate the privacy interest of a person depicted in the
recording. However, the agency must
disclose the recording to the person whose privacy is being protected.
At the same time, the original amendments allowed disclosure
of the recordings to be delayed for up to a year if such a disclosure would undermine
an active criminal or administrative investigation. This created an obvious ambiguity.
For example, if a certain public records request was made an agency would could
have been required to disclose the video to a person whose privacy is being
protected even if that agency wished to delay disclosure due to a criminal or administrative
investigation. SB 94 corrects this ambiguity. Due to SB 94 being signed into
law, the agency must now only provide an estimated date for the disclosure of
the video or audio recording to the person whose privacy is being implicated if
it would interfere with a criminal or administrative investigation.