Published Thursday, Jan. 4, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News Records law now includes electronic data FORMAT MUST BE AVAILABLE IF FACTS ARE STORED THAT WAY BY TRUONG PHUOC KHÁNH Mercury News If information is power, a new state law just ordered the government to give more power to the people, electronically speaking. The California Public Records Act finally caught up with the technological revolution and, as of Monday, requires local and state agencies to share public records with the public in an electronic format if that is how the data is stored. Until now, agencies could release public data in any format of their choice. Even if an agency had the information in their computers, they could instead dump mounds of paperwork on a requester who then would have the time-consuming task of sorting through thousands of pages of printed materials manually. ``It's a huge advance in electronic democracy,'' said Palo Alto City Attorney Ariel Calonne. ``The current system was never designed with a view toward making it easy for the public to find out what is going on. Electronic access is going to change that and truly open up government to public oversight.'' >From public employees' salaries to names of property owners along Main Street, such types of information are all public records and most likely stored in some database. Want to see how your city is spending your money but don't want to leaf through two-inch-thick binders full of mind-numbing numbers? While many Bay Area cities post their annual budgets online, some don't. But most balance the budgets on the computer. ``If that information is held electronically, you ought to be able to get it electronically,'' said Tom Newton, general counsel at California Newspaper Publishers Association, which lobbied heavily for the law, AB 2799. ``Instead of getting 3,000 or 4,000 pages, you can get it maybe on two discs that cost a buck or two, drop it in your system, and try to figure out what it all means.'' Herb Borock, a researcher and consultant in Palo Alto, has been monitoring the actions of his city hall for two decades. A frequent and familiar presence at local public meetings, Borock said if he knew certain types of information were available electronically, he would be more inclined to request it. Take Measure J, which would have given Palo Alto planning commissioners decision-making power on certain land-use matters. Palo Alto voters rejected the local measure last fall. Borock wanted to compare how individual precincts voted on Measure J. ``If it was available in an electronic form, it would be easier to do analysis of the data,'' Borock said. ``Instead of taking out the calculator, or doing it by hand, you could use a program to analyze that data.'' Some agencies have been releasing electronic records even before the law took effect. The Santa Clara County registrar of voters has for the past few years stored voting results electronically. The data is available on computer discs and is sold to the public for $10 or more, depending on how much information is requested. Who would seek voting tallies? Candidates, both winners and losers, and even cities sometimes want to see how their populace voted, said Mary Watson, a clerk at the county's front desk. ``Sometimes it's students doing a research paper at school,'' Watson said. For Borock, the reason is simple. ``I just think it's important for the public to participate in the process, at the local level especially,'' Borock said. That was the whole intent behind the state's public records act, which provides that any person may receive a copy of a public record from state and local government agencies, which may charge only the direct costs of copying the records. The law, passed in the 1960s, had one line covering computer data. It gave agencies the option of providing electronically stored information ``in a form determined by the agency.'' ``That was the law we've been living under,'' said Newton, the newspaper publishers' lawyer. ``They have the option of giving you the information in a modern form in a disc or an e-mail or, alternatively, burying you in paper.'' The amended law now says, ``The agency shall make the information available in any electronic format in which it holds the information.'' The League of California Cities continues to have reservations about the new law, said Amy Brown, a legislative representative for the league, which is looking at the law's administrative and financial costs to cities. The requirement that agencies turn over even information in its raw electronic form concerned cities, Brown said. Before Jan. 1, data could be tweaked and summarized so recipients could better understand it, Brown said. The amended law, written by Assemblyman Kevin Shelley, D-San Francisco, says agencies may recover the direct costs of duplicating a copy of a record in an electronic format, and if programming and computer services are needed to produce the record, the requester would bear the cost.