How to Request a Public Record
Watchdog reporter Beau Yarbrough walks you through how to file a Freedom of Information Act request and get public records.
Beau Yarbrough isn’t just a watchdog reporter. He’s a watchdog reporter for 11 daily newspapers in the Los Angeles area.
As a journalist with the Southern California News Group, he files stories that run in the San Bernardino Sun, Riverside Press-Enterprise, L.A. Daily News, Orange County Register and seven others.
In that role, he regularly requests public records and data to monitor how well government is doing its job (or not) and to investigate “potential shenanigans,” as he puts it.
We talked with him about how to file a public records request.
What is a FOIA request? And what is a state public records request?
You will see "FOIA" used as a shorthand for a public records request. It stands for a Freedom of Information Act request, and normally refers to the federal law of that name, although some states call their own public records law "FOIA" as well.
The idea behind public records laws is that the work that the government does, funded with your tax dollars, is stuff that you should know about, by default, unless there's some compelling reason to not tell you everything. (Military secrets, information that might ruin a criminal investigation, personal information that would put people at risk are all often partially or totally exempt from records laws.)
The federal FOIA law only covers the federal government. States have their own laws.
The California Public Records Act, which covers every public agency in California from the local to the state level, other than the state legislature (which has its own public records law in California) is one of my most-used tools as a journalist.
For more information about public records laws in your state, visit this website.
How do you know what records to request?
If you think someone in the government has created a record of something, they probably have. Government agencies love records. The challenge is figuring out who has it and what it's called. In California, agencies don't have to create a new document if one doesn't already exist, so you want to ask for specific records whenever possible, to prevent an agency being unable to find the record you want (innocently or on purpose).
Whistleblowers who think something nefarious is going on can often point journalists toward records to request. (Using public records as the basis for a story also helps protect whistleblowers by disguising that they tipped you off to a problem.) I also call friendly people at other similar government agencies and ask them what a record would be called, who it would be shared with, etc., to help me make more successful requests.
Some of the most useful records are also the most obvious: When elected officials or government employees discuss official business, whether it's in a written memo, an email, a Slack message or even a text message, it's an official record. You can request all of it.
But remember: The more broad your records request is, the more time it'll take to fulfill, even for an agency that is happy to comply with a request. And if there are fees involved for collecting the records, you could jack up your costs with a fishing expedition.
What's the first thing you should do when requesting public records?
In addition to making a specific as possible request, you should know who to ask for the records — typically a spokesperson, city clerk or other custodian of the records, but sometimes a lawyer hired to handle such things — and you should know at least the basics of the public records law you're using. You'll both be able to make better requests (don't bother asking for something that's definitely not going to be released, like discussions of ongoing litigation) but also be able to spot when you're being inappropriately shut down.
What should you do if you get pushback or delay on a records request?
Your first step, as always, should be to have some basic familiarity with the law. Ask what specific legal exemption they're relying on to deny giving you what you want and look it up -- I've had agencies and even lawyers cite exemptions that didn't apply to my request. If you're still getting pushback, your news organization probably has legal representation that you might be able to ask for help. But there are also non-profits that can help. Journalism organizations like Investigative Reporters and Editors or the Society of Professional Journalists also have resources available. And if there are journalists in your state who are good at obtaining public records, ask them for help -- most will be happy to help a newer reporter.
What do you do when you have the records? How do you know if you have a story
First, skim through what you've got as soon as possible. It's not uncommon for an agency to give you wrong or incomplete records, declare your request fulfilled and close the request. If you catch them early, you won't have to go back to the end of the line if you spot a problem.
Depending on the record, you may need to extract what you've got into a spreadsheet or other document to make sense of what you're looking at. (There are free conversion tools out there that convert PDFs to spreadsheets, in case the government agency gives you a record in a less-useful format.)
It's possible that you'll discover that either the records don't show what you expected or that you need to keep digging, possibly elsewhere. It happens and shouldn't be seen as any kind of failure. I love the Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight” in part because it shows how many dead ends, tedious searching and occasional missed tips are involved in this kind of work. If it could happen to the Boston Globe's Spotlight team, it can happen to you. Keep your chin up and keep going.
Once you're close to publishing a story that relies on records, post them to a public hosting site like Scribd or DocumentCloud, and then embed the files in your published story. . This lets readers fact-check your work, which makes your work more credible and accurate, and may lead to the uncovering of other stories by putting the data in front of more eyeballs.
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Any other tips?
If you can't get a record from an agency, for whatever reason, it's worth asking agencies that share information with them for records of the communications between them, which can contain the records you're looking for. Local agencies often have to share data with the state, for instance, and if your local city, county or school district won't give you the data, the state may well do so instead.
This is also a big, complicated topic that changes as laws and technology do. Whenever I attend an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference (highly recommended), I am always amazed at sitting in the audience with some of the best journalists on the planet and hearing them ooh and aah over new ideas or techniques they learn during presentations. Don't beat yourself up if you don't master the use of public records immediately — most of us never truly will.
Great tips! I file a lot of public records requests in Iowa and agree that it's important to become familiar with your state's law, and cite that law in your request. (So if I am requesting state or local government records, I would say I am requesting records "under Iowa Code Chapter 22," not "under the Freedom of Information Act.")
Finding out as much as you can before you make the request is important because in Iowa, if your request is overly broad they can try to charge you hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Learn who is responsible for what in your local or state government. I have filed requests to the wrong agency and come up empty.
Many states have transparency organizations that can guide you. The Iowa Freedom of Information Council has sample letters and lots of other helpful information on their website.
A couple of other tips: many government officials use multiple email addresses, so I would never cite a specific email address like John.doe@iowa.gov in a request. Ask for all written correspondence in the possession of whatever agency to or from John Doe, regardless of the email account used (or cell phone for text messages).
A former government employee once told me that I had missed an important email chain because I had requested correspondence to or from John Doe, and on that particular chain John Doe was cc'd on the correspondence (not the sender or the main recipient). I think they should have provided it, because it contained emails he received. But since then I have tried to put wording along these lines into my requests: "I am seeking all emails in the possession of the Department of Whatever, whether John Doe was the original sender, the main recipient, or cc'd on the correspondence."