Five Rolling Notices, No Determination Date

Case 23-009185 | Card 40 | 4880 T Street, Sacramento CA 95819

R.26-71 asked for a raw system export of Paul's 2025 case notes, at minimum the case ID and note text. The City opened the request on January 8, 2026 and stated it would determine within ten days whether the request sought disclosable records R.26-71. It then sent five "additional time is necessary ... due to the volume of materials" notices — January 20, February 3, February 17, March 3, and March 18, 2026 — each citing Government Code 7922.535(c)(2) and each moving the determination date forward R.26-71.

GC.7922.535(a) requires the determination within ten days. GC.7922.535(b) permits an unusual-circumstances extension by written notice and provides that the notice "shall not specify a date that would result in an extension for more than 14 days"; neither subdivision provides for extensions beyond that cap. On March 17, 2026, the requester objected in writing, quoted 7922.535(a) and (b), listed the rolling notices, and asked the City to confirm whether it had made the determination R.26-71. The City sent another notice and, on March 26, 2026, closed the request: "All responsive records have been provided" R.26-71. The request closed seventy-seven days after opening without a direct answer to the determination question.

Each notice gave volume as the reason. The record supplies a same-class comparison: R.26-1061, a raw note/log export for five other officers covering November-December 2025, opened March 17, 2026 and closed in eight days with no extension R.26-1061. The produced record contains no volume figure, search log, or determination record for R.26-71 that would account for the difference between the two requests.

IN PLAIN TERMS

The Public Records Act sets a short first deadline: the City must say, within ten days plus at most one fourteen-day extension, whether it has records to release. It may then take longer to gather and produce them. On this request, the City postponed that first step five times over seventy-seven days R.26-71. The requester raised the problem in writing before the request closed; the City did not answer it R.26-71. A later request for the same kind of export, covering five other officers, closed in eight days with no extension; the comparison does not prove the two requests were the same size, only that the City has closed a same-class export quickly R.26-1061.

RECORD CHAIN

  1. The rule. GC.7922.535(a) requires a determination within ten days; GC.7922.535(b) permits an unusual-circumstances extension by written notice and provides that the notice "shall not specify a date that would result in an extension for more than 14 days"; GC.7922.500 bars using the CPRA to delay or obstruct inspection or copying.
  2. The City postponed the determination five times. R.26-71 opened January 8, 2026. The City sent five "volume of materials" notices between January 20 and March 18, 2026, each resetting the date by which it would say whether it possessed responsive records R.26-71.
  3. Each notice deferred the determination itself, not a production estimate. Every notice repeated that the City "will notify you on or before [date] as to whether the City is in possession of non-exempt records responsive to your request" — the 7922.535(a) determination — rather than a delivery estimate following a determination already made R.26-71.
  4. The requester objected in writing on March 17, 2026. The objection quoted 7922.535(a)/(b), listed the rolling notices, and asked the City to confirm whether the determination had been made and, if not, to cite the specific basis for extending it further R.26-71.
  5. The City answered with a fifth notice, then closure. The step after the objection was another extension notice (March 18, notify by April 1), followed by closure on March 26, 2026 with "All responsive records have been provided" — no statement of whether or when the 7922.535(a) determination was made R.26-71.
  6. A same-class request closed in eight days. R.26-1061, a raw note/log export for five other officers, opened March 17, 2026 and closed in eight days with redacted officer files and no volume-based extension R.26-1061.

FULL CIRCLE

The City may argue: the request covered a full year of one inspector's notes, so the volume of materials genuinely required the additional time it noticed under 7922.535(c)(2).

The statute addresses volume through the single extension it permits. The ten-day determination deadline in GC.7922.535(a) and the fourteen-day extension cap in GC.7922.535(b) do not vary with request size; a large request still receives a determination, followed if needed by a production schedule. The record for R.26-71 contains no determination date distinct from the rolling notice dates, no cited basis for extending the determination beyond one fourteen-day period, and no search log or volume figure addressing the difference from the eight-day same-class request R.26-1061.

The comparator does not establish how quickly R.26-71 should have closed. The finding is that the City used five notices to postpone the GC.7922.535(a) determination, received a written objection citing the statute's limits, and closed the request without stating whether or when the determination had been made.

APPLICABLE LAW

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