Greater Hous. P’ship v. Paxton
No. 13-0745
Case Summary written by Jenée Duran, Staff Member.
JUSTICE GUZMAN delivered the opinion of the Court, in which CHIEF JUSTICE HECHT, JUSTICE GREEN, JUSTICE LEHRMANN, JUSTICE DEVINE, and JUSTICE BROWN joined.
In May 2008, Houston-area resident Jim Jenkins submitted a request to Greater Houston Partnership (GHP) for “a copy of the check register for all checks issued for the year 2007,” basing his request on the Texas Public Information Act (TPIA). Jenkins claimed that GHP was “an organization that spen[t] or [was] supported in whole or in part by public funds,” and as such was “subject to the Public Information Act in the same manner as a governmental body.” GHP functioned much like a chamber of commerce, contracting to help promote the economy of the City of Houston by providing consulting, event planning, and marketing services in line with an “Agreement for Professional Services.”
GHP objected to the request from Jenkins and did not disclose the information he requested, acknowledging that it received public funds from the city, but did not agree that it qualified as a “governmental body” under the TPIA because the funds were compensation for services provided through an arm’s-length contract with the city. GHP referred the matter to the Texas Attorney General as provided in the TPIA. The Attorney General’s Open Records Division concluded that the GHP was a “governmental body” subject to the TPIA’s disclosure requirements in an informal letter ruling. GHP filed a declaratory-judgment action against the Attorney General in response to its informal ruling, seeking a “declaration that: (1) the Attorney General lacked jurisdiction over the dispute and (2) even if jurisdiction was proper, GHP was not a ‘governmental body’ under the TPIA.” Jenkins also filed an additional request for a copy of GHP’s 2008 “disbursement registers and/or check registers.” The Attorney General closed this second request without a finding and directed a trial court to resolve the suit, in which Jenkins intervened a short time after.
The trial court found that “GHP was a ‘governmental body’ supported by public funds and ordered disclosure of the 2007 and 2008 check registers.” The court of appeals agreed with the trial court and affirmed its judgment, using the Kneeland test to conclude GHP qualified as a governmental body under the TPIA, finding that the phrase “supported in whole or in part by public funds” was ambiguous. GHP appealed, and the Supreme Court granted its petition for review to “determine the proper scope of the funding source element of the TPIA’s governmental body definition.”
Issue: Whether “a private entity operating like a chamber of commerce is a ‘governmental body’ subject to public disclosure of its private business affairs under the Texas Public Information Act.”
The Court held that the TPIA could not be interpreted to apply to privately controlled corporations performing services under quid pro quo government contracts, finding that the Act only applied to private entities acting as the functional equivalent of the government. The Court “define[d] ‘supported in whole or in part by public funds’ to include only those private entities or their sub-parts sustained, at least in part, by public funds, meaning they could not perform the same or similar services without public funds.” They reasoned that because GHP did not depend on a public revenue source to survive, it was not sustained even in part by government funds. They reinforced this reasoning by analyzing the construction of the term “supported,” finding that the term was “consistent with the scope and nature of the eleven other types of entities more clearly described as a ‘governmental body’” in the same provision of the statute. Finally, they reasoned that their narrowly-constructed definition of “supported in whole or in part by public funds” was in-line with the federal act on which the TPIA was based—the Freedom of Information Act. The Court held that because they did not find the TPIA’s language ambiguous, the GHP was not a “governmental body” under the Act, and reversed the court of appeals’ judgment.
JUSTICE BOYD, joined by JUSTICE JOHNSON and JUSTICE WILLETT, dissenting.
Justice Boyd dissented to express his position that the Greater Houston Partnership was supported in whole or in party by public funds, thereby making it a governmental body required to disclose information requested by public information requests. He argued that the words “supported by” were ambiguous, and that he would consider the Attorney Generals constructions of the TPIA’s definition of “governmental body” to be persuasive. Finally, he also argued that he would clarify the Kneeland test, which the majority found did not apply to this case, to provide guidance when determining “whether a private entity that provides services to or for the government and is paid with public funds is ‘supported in whole or in part by public funds’” and therefore a governmental body under the Act.