February 15, 2011

Mr. Michael Gary

Assistant General Counsel

Harris County Appraisal District

P.O. Box 920975

Houston, Texas 77292-0975

OR2011-02308

Dear Mr. Gary:

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# 409070 (HCAD# 10-3471).

The Harris County Appraisal District (the "district") received a request for seventeen categories of information pertaining to hearings held on twenty specified accounts. You state you have released some of the requested information. You claim the submitted information is excepted from disclosure under sections 552.101 and 552.149 of the Government Code. We have considered the exceptions you claim and reviewed the submitted representative sample of information. ⁽¹⁾

You state the submitted information was the subject of a previous request for information, as a result of which this office issued Open Records Letter No. 2010-18457 (2010). In that ruling, we determined to the extent the requested information was furnished to the district by property owners in connection with the appraisal of property and under a promise of confidentiality, the information must be withheld under section 552.101 of the Government Code in conjunction with section 22.27(a) of the Tax Code. We further determined to the extent the requested information relates to real property sales and was provided to the district by private entities, it must be withheld under section 552.149(a) of the Government Code. We have no indication there has been any change in the law, facts, or circumstances on which the previous ruling was based. Accordingly, we conclude the district must rely on Open Records Letter No. 2010-18457 as a previous determination and withhold or release the submitted information in accordance with that ruling. See Open Records Decision No. 673 (2001) (so long as law, facts, and circumstances on which prior ruling was based have not changed, first type of previous determination exists where requested information is precisely same information as was addressed in prior attorney general ruling, ruling is addressed to same governmental body, and ruling concludes that information is or is not excepted from disclosure).

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,

Claire V. Morris Sloan

Assistant Attorney General

Open Records Division

CVMS/tf

Ref: ID# 409070

Enc. Submitted documents

c: Requestor

(w/o enclosures)

Footnotes

1. We assume 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 those records contain substantially different types of information than that submitted to this office.

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