{"id":436732,"date":"2026-08-18T23:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/436732\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T23:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:36:11","slug":"should-california-government-records-take-years-to-be-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/436732\/","title":{"rendered":"Should California government records take years to be released?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Should government records take years to be released? Caltrans sends monthly extension emails<\/p>\n

Public records requests from KCRA 3 show a pattern of lengthy “extensions”<\/p>\n

\"David<\/p>\n

Special Projects Producer<\/p>\n

SACRAMENTO, Calif. \u2014<\/p>\n

How long do you think it takes for reporters to get public records? A day? Ten days? Thirty?<\/p>\n

Under California law, agencies are supposed to respond to a request for records within 10 days \u2013 that\u2019s the California Public Records Act or CPRA. <\/p>\n

Here are a couple of examples from my own list here, both of them from the agency Caltrans, the department in charge of our roads and transportation infrastructure.<\/p>\n

In one case, we asked for records about a plan they had for restoration of rest areas. That was November 2024. Nearly two years later, we’re getting monthly emails saying they need extensions. <\/p>\n

“Caltrans has identified responsive records for this request… you will receive a further, more complete response no later than,” the messages say. The deadline has changed every month. A new email arrived starting in December 2024. We got the last on in July. <\/p>\n

We still don’t have the records. <\/p>\n

\"Image\"Image<\/p>\n

The same happened on another request, this one for a story about a consumer we thought received damage to their car in a construction zone. We got the same emails from Caltrans, the same “you will receive a further more complete response” in a month. No records for that, either.<\/p>\n

So, why should you care?<\/p>\n

Governor Gavin Newsom has said that transparency should be a \u201clegal and moral requirement.\u201d Yet former members of the governor’s staff have been accused in legal documents of obfuscating and delaying CPRA requests, even for years. <\/p>\n

The question becomes, if the state is delaying records on things like rest area restoration or car damage in construction zones, what other things is it delaying? <\/p>\n

What other records, for bigger things, do they not want the public to see or talk about?<\/p>\n

See more coverage of top California stories here<\/a> | Download our app<\/a> | Subscribe to our morning newsletter<\/a> | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel<\/a> | Make KCRA a preferred news source in Google<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Should government records take years to be released? Caltrans sends monthly extension emails Public records requests from KCRA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4742,7,9,3501,8,3315,283,173323,48468,167115,173317,217,1828,26177,457,173319,1050,56553,473,173326,3906,173329,173321,173325,173327,31751,27479,8553,5681,55584,173318,6247,173328,173322,173324,173320,4610,2684,72],"class_list":["post-436732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-agency","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-law","tag-california-news","tag-caltrans","tag-car","tag-car-damage","tag-construction-zone","tag-construction-zones","tag-cpra","tag-day","tag-delays","tag-fields","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-government-records","tag-investigate","tag-investigative","tag-kcra","tag-legal-requirement","tag-month","tag-monthly-extension-email","tag-monthly-extensions","tag-newsroom-reporting","tag-obfuscating","tag-public-record","tag-public-records","tag-public-records-act","tag-record","tag-records","tag-records-requests","tag-request","tag-rest-area","tag-rest-area-restoration","tag-roads-and-transportation","tag-state-delays","tag-thing","tag-transparency","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}