Masthead

Open Records FAQ

Government agencies in Texas are required to inform the public about the rights and responsibilities outlined in the Public Information Act by posting in their offices a notice from the Texas Building and Procurement Commission. This agency provides the following FAQ as an additional resource.

What is “public information”?

Public information is information that the Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner (OCCC) collects, assembles, or maintains under a law or ordinance or in connection with the transaction of official agency business. The term “open records” is also used to refer to public information documents. According to the Texas Public Information Act, everyone is entitled to complete information about the affairs of government and the official acts of public officials and employees, unless that information is deemed confidential by law.

For more information about the Texas Public Information Act, see the Attorney General's Open Government publications.

How do I request public information from the OCCC?

There is no special form to fill out or special wording to use for Open Records requests. Simply put your request for information in writing to the attention of Dana Edgerton, Public Information Officer, and mail, hand-deliver, fax, or e-mail it to the OCCC.

To help ensure that you receive the information you want, include the following information in your Open Records request:

Texas law states that the OCCC cannot ask you why you need the information. However, we may ask you to clarify your request in order to determine the documents that pertain to your request, and to avoid sending you too much or too little information.

How is public information provided to me?

You have a few options here. If the documentation you seek is available electronically, and you would prefer it in that form, we can usually provide the information on a diskette or send it to you via e-mail. Otherwise, we will send paper copies to you via standard U.S. mail or via fax machine.

If you don’t need to receive copies but wish to merely view the information, please state that in your written request. When your request is received, the Public Information Officer will call you to set an appointment for you to come to our office and view the documents. Any information that is confidential by law will be removed from the documents you view.

How long will it take for the OCCC to fill my request?

The Public Information Act gives the agency ten business days to fill requests. Sometimes, depending on the circumstances, we may need more time. If that’s the case, we will let you know the date and time the information will be available. We will also let you know if we do not have the information you seek.

You may face greater delays if you request information that is deemed confidential by law, such as Social Security numbers, licensee examination reports, and other items protected by law. When a requestor asks for information that the OCCC believes is exempt from public disclosure, the OCCC must forward the request and the pertinent documents to the Texas Attorney General’s office for a ruling about disclosure.

To streamline the process, you may want to state in your request that you do not wish to receive information deemed confidential by the Public Information Act, the Texas Finance Code, or other statutes or case law. When you indicate that you do not require confidential information, we will automatically remove any such information from the requested materials and send along the remainder of the information to you.

What happens if I request confidential information?

Some information contained in our records is made confidential by the Texas Public Information Act or other laws and statutes, such as the Texas Finance Code. The Public Information Act requires that we protect confidential information from disclosure.

In many cases, requestors ask for confidential material only inadvertently, such as when they request documents that contain other people’s private information (such as Social Security numbers or financial information). If you ask for information that the law deems confidential (and therefore exempt from disclosure), we will contact you to determine whether you require that information specifically. If you don’t need that confidential information, we will simply remove it from your copies of the documents.

If you do want to obtain information the OCCC considers confidential, within ten days of receiving your request we will ask the Texas Attorney General to decide whether or not we should release that information. The Attorney General’s office must decide the matter within 45 business days after receiving a request for an open records ruling (although they can extend this deadline by an additional 10 business days if they choose). Once the Attorney General’s office has made their decision, they’ll send a copy of their ruling to you and to the OCCC.

While we await the AG’s decision, the OCCC will release to you any information you had requested that is not considered exempt from disclosure.

Will I have to pay for the information?

As a general rule, if the total charge comes to $10 or more, you will be billed for that amount; we’ll include the bill along with the materials you’ve requested. If the expense to our agency is less than $10, we will not charge you.

Here is a listing of the most common charges:

Copies and/or printouts, up to 8 ½”  x 14”

$0.10/page

Personnel, non-programming

$15.00/hour

Diskettes, supply

$1.00/each

Postage

Actual cost

Most requests do not end up costing the requestor anything. However, if filling your request entails a great deal of time, effort, or materials on the agency’s part, you may face some costs. The Texas Buildings and Procurement Commission determines the amounts that state agencies can charge for filling Open Records requests; you can read their detailed set of charges and guidelines in this PDF version of administrative rules updated in January 2003.

If the cost of filling the request is estimated to exceed $40, the OCCC will send to you in advance a written, itemized estimate of charges. When you receive the estimate, you have the opportunity to either agree to the estimated charges, withdraw your request, or modify the request to decrease the expense. For example, if the information you need is available electronically, you could opt to receive it via e-mail rather than pay for paper copies. Please note that if we do not receive a response to the estimate from you within ten business days from the date on the estimate, we will consider your request withdrawn.

We may require a 75% deposit for projects that are estimated to cost more than $100. Also, if you have an unpaid invoice from a previous request, you need to pay that invoice in full before we can deliver the second request.

What information about me might be disclosed to the public?

We do have on file information provided by those members of the public who use our services (such as callers to the Consumer Helpline) or are licensed under our authority (such as pawnshop employees). The law protects certain details of your personal affairs in which the public has no reasonable interest, such as your Social Security number or details of a specific financial transaction. Should a requestor ask for documents containing information provided by you to the OCCC, the OCCC will disclose information only to the extent necessary.

Here’s an example of a situation in which we might release information you have provided to us. Say you make a written complaint about one of the businesses we license, and include documents containing your name, address, phone number, and financial details such as account numbers and dollar amounts involved. We might later receive an open records request from a third party for copies of all complaints about that particular business. The Public Information Act requires that we withhold either the complainant’s personal financial data or any personal identifiers (name, address, etc.). Therefore, if the requestor wanted to know who made the complaints, we would provide the identifying information but withhold any personal financial details. On the other hand, if the requestor wanted to focus on the financial aspects of complaints, we would provide those details and withhold any information identifying the complainants.

To learn more about the types of information protected from disclosure, see our Confidential and Exempt Information page.

dividing line

link Texas Online