June 6, 2012

Ms. Elaine Nicholson

Assistant City Attorney

City of Austin

P.O. Box 1088

Austin, Texas 78767-8828

OR2012-08690

Dear Ms. Nicholson:

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# 455626.

The City of Austin (the "city") received a request for specified e-mails from two specified departments and one named city employee regarding a named individual during a specified time period. You claim that 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 representative sample of information. ⁽¹⁾

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, a school district, a hospital district, 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 [required public disclosure]. If information in an audit working paper is also maintained in another record, that other record is not excepted from [public disclosure] 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, the bylaws adopted by or other action of the governing board of a hospital district, 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 the submitted information consists of audit working papers created and maintained by the city's Water Utility Internal Audit Office (the "audit office"). You explain the audit office was created to "assist the city manager in fulfilling his responsibilities of managing the utilities owned and operated by the [c]ity," as set out in Article V, Section 1 of the Austin City Charter. You further explain that the audit office monitors the financial condition of the city's water utility and that the information at issue pertains to an internal audit conducted by the audit office. Based on your representations and our review, we find you have demonstrated the requested information was prepared or maintained by the audit office in conducting an audit authorized or required by an ordinance of the city. Accordingly, the city may withhold the requested 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,

Vanessa Burgess

Assistant Attorney General

Open Records Division

VB/dls

Ref: ID# 455626

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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