D. Budgets.

There is no exception in the Public Records Act restricting access to budgets, and the budgets of various governmental units will often be among the documents the public is most interest in seeing.  Certain documents generated in the budget process, however, may be privileged.  In Capital Information Group v. Office of the Governor, 923 P.2d 29 (Alaska 1996), the Alaska Supreme Court dealt with the trial court’s denial of two sets of documents sought by the Capital Information Group ("CIG"), a news organization that publishes periodicals describing the activities of the Alaska state government. The first consisted of budget proposals sent from each executive department commissioner to the Office of Management and Budget, and the second, each department's proposals for new legislation sent to the governor's legislative liaison. In each case, the requests were denied on the grounds that the documents were protected by the deliberative process privilege. The trial court required the state to submit the records requested by CIG for in camera review, and thereafter granted the state's motion for summary judgment based on the deliberative process privilege. 

In CIG, the Alaska Supreme Court found that the legislative proposals at issue were exempt from disclosure pursuant to the deliberative process privilege. The deliberative process privilege is discussed in more detail in section (Open Records) I.B.1.b. It said they were pre-decisional, and that arguments that they were not, because they were a one-way communication, were without merit because this did not mean that they were not deliberative. The court said that the privilege is meant to further candor and the giving of advice or opinion to the chief executive, and the governor need not respond to a document for candor to be desirable.

By contrast, the court said that the budget impact memoranda that CIG sought, which were documents required by a specific state statute to be sent to the Office of Management and Budget, were not exempt from disclosure under the deliberative process privilege. The statute provides that these documents and other related documents are "public information" after the date they are forwarded. AS 37.07.050(g). Nonetheless, the court found that the budget impact memoranda met the threshold requirements for the deliberative process privilege. They were pre-decisional because they were submitted before the governor made his final determinations as to his proposed budget. They were deliberative because they were meant to be, and clearly were, a direct part of the deliberative process, allowing the governor to hear the needs and opinions of each of the agencies that needed to be accommodated in the budget. The court said that since the documents were pre-decisional and deliberative, it would normally proceed to question whether the demonstrated need for disclosure outweighed the government's interest in confidentiality. However, it found that in this case the legislature had already weighed those interests and resolved them in favor of public disclosure. The court found particularly compelling the fact that the document itself was created as a result of a legislative requirement, and that in mandating that the report be made and submitted to the OMB, the legislature had declared that the report should be public, implicitly determining that the need for public disclosure outweighed any risk to candor on the agency's part. It said that this determination was entitled to significant weight, given the legislature's constitutional power to allocate executive department functions and duties among the offices, departments and agencies of the state government.

Related to this, the Office of Management and Budget provides technical assistance to the governor and legislature on a variety of governmental matters including identifying long range goals and objectives, preparing a state comprehensive development plan and assisting with coordination in preparation of agency plans and programs, reviewing planning within state government as necessary for receipt of federal and other funds, and other functions. OMB must keep a complete file of internal audit reports resulting from its audits, and a complete file of the internal audit work papers and other related supportive material. Internal audit work papers and other related supportive material are confidential, and internal audit reports are confidential until released by the governor. However, internal audit work papers and other related supportive material containing information, data, estimates, and statistics obtained during the course of an audit may be kept confidential only to the extent required by law applicable to the agency from which the material is or was obtained. AS 44.19.147.