Office of Information Practices

Opinion Letter No. 03-08
June 18, 2003
Kauai Planning Commission and Subdivision Committee Meetings

[NOTE:  This opinion has been affected by Act 64 (Sess. Law H. 2017). In summary, section 92-7.5, HRS (effective July 1, 2018), requires boards to make the board packet available to the public at the time the board packet is distributed to the board members; to provide notice to persons requesting notification of meetings that the board packet is available for inspection in the board’s office; and to provide reasonably prompt access to the board packet to any person upon request.]

Written reports of the Subdivision Committee of the Kauai Planning Commission containing the Committee’s recommendations to the Commission on subdivision applications need not be available to the public at the time that the Commission provides notice of the public meeting at which the subdivision applications are to be considered. The “Sunshine Law” does not require that records relating to items on an agenda be available to the public at the time the notice and the agenda are filed.

The UIPA requires that agency records that are open for public inspection and copying be available upon request; thus the written reports should be made public once they are completed. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 92F-11(b) (1993). As the reports are not yet in existence at the time an agenda is posted, they need not be created in order to satisfy a record request. Haw. Rev. Stat. § 92F-11(c) (1993).

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