February 9, 2009

Ms. Angela M. DeLuca

Assistant City Attorney

City of Bryan

P.O. Box 1000

Bryan, Texas 77805

OR2009-01663

Dear Ms. DeLuca:

You ask whether certain information is subject to required public disclosure under the Public Information Act (the "Act"), chapter 552 of the Government Code. Your request was assigned ID# 336876.

The Bryan Police Department (the "department") received a request for various items of personnel information relating to a named City of Bryan police officer. You state the department is releasing some of the requested information. You claim that the submitted information is excepted from disclosure under section 552.101 of the Government Code. We have considered the exception you claim and reviewed the submitted representative sample of information. ⁽¹⁾

Section 552.101 of the Government Code excepts from disclosure "information considered to be confidential by law, either constitutional, statutory, or by judicial decision." Gov't Code § 552.101. This section encompasses information protected by other statutes, such as section 143.089 of the Local Government Code. You state that the City of Bryan is a civil service city under chapter 143 of the Local Government Code. Section 143.089 contemplates two different types of personnel files: a file that must be maintained by the civil service director or the director's designee, and another file that may be maintained by the police department for its own use. Local Gov't Code § 143.089(a), (g). Information maintained in a police department's internal file pursuant to section 143.089(g) is confidential and must not be released. City of San Antonio v. Tex. Attorney Gen., 851 S.W.2d 946, 949 (Tex. App.--Austin 1993, writ denied).

You state that the submitted documents are the named officer's training records that are maintained in the department's internal files as authorized under section 143.089(g) of the Local Government Code. Based on this representation and our review of the submitted documents, we agree that the submitted information is confidential pursuant to section 143.089(g). Accordingly, the department must withhold the submitted training certification records under section 552.101 of the Government Code in conjunction with section 143.089(g) of the Local Government Code.

This letter ruling is limited to the particular information at issue in this request and limited to the facts as presented to us; therefore, this ruling must not be relied upon as a previous determination regarding any other information or any other circumstances.

This ruling triggers important deadlines regarding the rights and responsibilities of the governmental body and of the requestor. For more information concerning those rights and responsibilities, please visit our website at http://www.oag.state.tx.us/open/index_orl.php, or call the Office of the Attorney General's Open Government Hotline, toll free, at (877) 673-6839. Questions concerning the allowable charges for providing public information under the Act must be directed to the Cost Rules Administrator of the Office of the Attorney General at (512) 475-2497.

Sincerely,

Karen E. Stack

Assistant Attorney General

Open Records Division

KES/jb

Ref: ID# 336876

Enc. Submitted documents

c: Requestor

(w/o enclosures)

Footnotes

1. We assume that the "representative sample" of records submitted to this office is truly representative of the requested records as a whole. See Open Records Decision Nos. 499 (1988), 497 (1988). This open records letter does not reach, and therefore does not authorize the withholding of, any other requested records to the extent that those records contain substantially different types of information than that submitted to this office.

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