California Public Records Act Recodified to be MORE “User Friendly”

Effective now, a substantial portion of the Government Code has been recodified make the Code more “user friendly.”
Under AB 474, about 420 changes were made to The California Public Records Act (CPRA), without changing the substance of the code. Since its enactment in 1968, the CPRA has been revised many times, in a somewhat piecemeal fashion. This has resulted in a statute that is poorly organized and cumbersome for members of the public to use and understand, impeding fulfillment of the goals underlying the CPRA.
 
The rewritten and recodified CPRA, is divided into seven parts:
Part 1, “General Provisions,” is §§ 7920.000 to 7920.545
Part 2, “Disclosure and Exemptions Generally, is §§ 7921.000 to 7922.210.
Part 3, “Procedures and Related Matters,” is §§ 7922.505 to 7922.725.
Part 4, “Enforcement,” [by “[seeking] injunctive or declarative relief, or … a writ of mandate.…”] is §§ 7923.000 to 7923.500. 
Part 5, “Specific Types of Records,” is §§ 7923.600 to 7929.610. Part 5, Ch. 1 is “Crimes, Weapons, and Law Enforcement.”
Part 6, “Other Exemptions from Disclosure,” §§ 7930.000 to 7930.125. This “Secrecy Code,” lists, in alphabetical order, scores of specific exemptions.
Part 7, GC 7931.000. 
 
This was done for several reasons, notably to:

• Reduce the length and complexity of current sections. 
• Avoid unnecessary cross-references. 
• Neither expand nor contract the scope of existing exemptions to the general rule that records are open to the public pursuant to the current provisions of the CPRA. 
• To the extent compatible with 3), above, use terms with common definitions. 
• Organize the existing provisions in such a way that similar provisions are located in close proximity to one another. 
• Eliminate duplicative provisions. 
• Clearly express legislative intent without any change in the substantive provisions. 

 
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