City of Austin staffers wrongly shut down a public information request last year after debating whether to charge $250 an hour to fulfill it and concluding, incorrectly, that the city didn’t own the data from its multimillion-dollar cultural arts grants program.
City officials now say they made a mistake. They do own the data, should have provided answers and are still trying to determine how the breakdown occurred, said city spokeswoman Jenny LaCoste-Caputo.
The public records failure raises broader questions about how the city manages its public information requests, and what happens when city records are managed by outside contractors. It also exposes weaknesses in how the city determines what information belongs to the public.
The city began reviewing its own actions after Austin Current raised questions about the public cultural arts grant program, which is administered by the Long Center and distributes about $20 million a year to musicians, artists, venues and arts organizations. During its reporting, Austin Current obtained internal emails between city staffers about a local student reporter who had asked for all applications submitted for the 2024 Live Music Fund grants. The emails detail a confusing and misguided public information process that prevented the release of city-owned data to the reporter.
Shunya Carroll, then a student journalist at the University of Texas, sought the more than 1,000 applications submitted, excluding information deemed by law to not be public.
How the request unraveled
Carroll’s request was directed to the Economic Development Department, which, at that time, oversaw the cultural arts grants.
Erica Shamaly, manager of the Music and Entertainment Division, noted that it was “a BIG ask that would take time” and, at the Long Center’s rate of $250 per hour for financial and data reporting, it would be expensive. The Long Center confirmed the rate and estimated it would take about 10 hours of work.
Instead of moving forward, the request was shut down. Jo Ann Fabian, then an executive assistant in the Economic Development Department, relayed a message indicating city legal staff said the information was “owned” by the Long Center, and Carroll’s request would be closed without a response.
Shamaly wrote in an email about the decision that she was “a bit surprised.”
About two weeks after his request, Carroll received an email that said, “The City of Austin has no responsive documents to your request. The City of Austin is not the owner of the information you are seeking.”
That should not have happened, LaCoste-Caputo said, adding the city indeed owns the data from its cultural arts grants, even if it is administered by a third party.
“The City of Austin’s City Attorney’s Office is not aware of any guidance given saying that the requested information is not owned by the City,” she said.
After raising questions about Carroll’s experience, Austin Current submitted its own public information request for the same data the student requested. The city provided the records quickly and at no cost.
Carroll, who wanted to write about the music grant applications for a class, dropped the inquiry. After he spoke with someone with the city Arts Commission, the information request surfaced at a June board meeting.
After that, it was “radio silence,” Carroll said.
“That just killed the story,” he said.
What public records require
Kelley Shannon, executive director of the Freedom Of Information Foundation of Texas, said city data administered by a third party is still public information. And even if the Long Center charges $250 to pull data, that’s the city’s problem, she said, not the public’s.
“The city shouldn’t be paying money to get their own records and they shouldn’t be passing that cost to the requester,” Shannon said.
According to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, labor costs of $15 an hour can be assessed for public information requests. Governments can charge $28.50 an hour if computer programming is required. Sometimes, they can charge a 20% overhead fee.
Between 2018 and 2022, the city received a total of 121,412 public information requests, according to a 2023 audit.
Those requests largely come in through the city’s public information portal, where staff routes them to the appropriate department.
Each department has a designated point of contact trained to handle public information requests and coordinates with staffers who have the needed information, LaCoste-Caputo told Austin Current. That person helps locate, compile and review the information; identifies whether sensitive or confidential information should be redacted; and determines what, if anything, to charge to the requester for the work.
The point of contact also determines whether a request must be sent to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which resolves public information disputes.
Despite the renewed scrutiny of his case, Carroll said no one from the city has reached out to him about his public information request. He has since graduated from college.
City officials say they are reviewing how the request was handled to prevent similar errors in the future.
