City of Fresno Has Thousands of Records Requests. Will Transparency Portal Help?

A new search function for the city of Fresno website may alleviate staff time dedicated to the thousands of public records demands submitted annually.

On Thursday, interim city clerk Amy Aller presented to councilmembers the beta version of the new transparency portal. The new portal consolidates several different links on the city’s website where contracts, agreements, and compensation rates can be found, Aller told councilmembers.

“What we want to provide is a single search bar and search box for every single thing that can be found on the city of Fresno website,” Aller said.

Aller and City Attorney Andrew Janz hope the portal will reduce Public Records Act requests submitted by making documents easier to find.

“I am hopeful that the portal will assist with our PRA workload,” Janz told GV Wire. “During my time as city attorney, we have a drastic increase in PRA requests.”

PRA Requests on the Rise

Janz said his office experienced a sharp rise in records request following his appointment to the position in December 2022. He doesn’t know what to attribute the increase to, but he’s seen requests from law firms and national media outlets especially rise.

The city is on track to beat the previous year, having received 4,692 requests for July 2025 through January compared to 3,715 for the same time period the year prior.

Staff have so far this year reviewed more than 633,000 pages.

An individual request can sometimes take more than a year, Janz said.

GV Wire has often had to wait months for request results to be returned.

David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said portals such as these often help with staff costs associated with fulfilling requests.

“Agencies often complain about the cost of responding to record requests, and we encourage them to seek exactly these kids of efficiencies and economies of scale to make this stuff more easily accessible,” Loy said.

Council Sets Search Parameters

Long turnaround times can be challenging for journalists when deadlines are pressing.

In 2025, when GV Wire broke news about political contracts between consultant Alex Tavlian and city councilmembers Mike Karbassi and former city councilmember Luis Chavez, the timeline of a special election to fill Chavez’s seat was looming.

Aller said many of the documents would be available through the portal with AI summaries making sifting through documents easier.

Councilmembers also wanted to make searching easier. Councilmember Tyler Maxwell wanted to be able to search by date range. Councilmember Miguel Arias wanted contract amounts more easily retrievable.

So far, the city has uploaded 5,300 documents and 36,000 pages.

Will State Pass Law to Charge Residents for Public Records?

One state lawmaker has introduced a bill to allow the government to charge a fee if workers spend more than 10 hours in a month searching for records requested by a single person.

Assemblymember Blanco Pacheco, a Downey Democrat, authored Assembly Bill 1821. The proposal would apply to most people, with exemptions for journalists and educational or scientific institutions.

However,  some agencies already seek high fees for public records, which has a chilling effect on the public’s right to know because “for most people … $100 is going to be too much,” David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, told CalMatters.

“The underlying principle is that the government’s records are the people’s records. The government serves the people; not the other way around.”

Pacheco justified her bill by pointing to someone in Fontana making more than 100 public records requests, and a request in Chula Vista that would require up to 300 hours of staff time.

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