December 22, 2010

Ms. Anne M. Constantine

Legal Counsel

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport

P.O. Box 619428

DFW Airport, Texas 75261-9428

OR2010-19263

Dear Ms. Constantine:

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# 404588.

The Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Board (the "board") received two requests from the same requestor for information pertaining to a specified investigation as well as information regarding allegations or complaints made against board employees and officials accused of ethics violations for a specified period of time. ⁽¹⁾ You state that you will release some of the requested information. You claim the submitted information is excepted from disclosure under section 552.116 of the Government Code. We have considered the exception you claim and reviewed the submitted information.

We note that the submitted information contains board resolutions. Because laws and ordinances are binding on members of the public, they are matters of public record and may not be withheld from disclosure under the Act. See Open Records Decision No. 221 at 1 (1979) ("official records of the public proceedings of a governmental body are among the most open of records"); see also Open Records Decision No. 551 at 2-3 (1990) (laws or ordinances are open records). The submitted resolutions are analogous to an ordinance. Accordingly, the board may not withhold the submitted resolutions and must release them in their entirety.

Section 552.116 of the Government Code provides as follows:

(a) An audit working paper of an audit of the state auditor or the auditor of a state agency, an institution of higher education as defined by Section 61.003, Education Code, a county, a municipality, or a joint board operating under Section 22.074, Transportation Code, including any audit relating to the criminal history background check of a public school employee, is excepted from the requirements of Section 552.021. If information in an audit working paper is also maintained in another record, that other record is not excepted from the requirements of Section 552.021 by this section.

(b) In this section:

(1) "Audit" means an audit authorized or required by a statute of this state or the United States, the charter or an ordinance of a municipality, an order of the commissioners court of a county, a resolution or other action of a board of trustees of a school district, including an audit by the district relating to the criminal history background check of a public school employee, or a resolution or other action of a joint board described by Subsection (a) and includes an investigation.

(2) "Audit working paper" includes all information, documentary or otherwise, prepared or maintained in conducting an audit or preparing an audit report, including:

(A) intra-agency and interagency communications; and

(B) drafts of the audit report or portions of those drafts.

Gov't Code § 552.116. You state that the board is a joint board operating under section 22.074 of the Transportation Code. You state that the submitted information consists of working papers used to conduct audits under the authority of an audit plan approved by a resolution of the board. You have provided a copy of the resolution. You inform us the board will release the final audit reports, together with any items in the working papers that are included in the audit reports. Based on your representations and our review of the information at issue, we conclude that the board may withhold the remaining submitted information under section 552.116 of the 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, toll free, at (888) 672-6787.

Sincerely,

Paige Lay

Assistant Attorney General

Open Records Division

PL/eeg

Ref: ID# 404588

Enc. Submitted documents

cc: Requestor

(w/o enclosures)

Footnotes

1. We note the board sought and received a clarification of the information requested for the second request for information. See Gov't Code § 552.222 (providing that if request for information is unclear, governmental body may ask requestor to clarify request); see also Open Records Decision No. 31 (1974) (when presented with broad requests for information rather than for specific records, governmental body may advise requestor of types of information available so that request may be properly narrowed).

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