Still no documents released to me by the City of Austin specifically in regard to any visits (my own records only show one total EMS visit that I authorized or saw with my own eyes during my conscious or waking hours) to my current solo-occupancy rental-apartment unit by Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services at any time during a cited 11-month period that began when I moved into this efficiency rental-unit in north Austin as the only official rent-paying tenant on June 21, 2019:
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: John McMillan <mcmillanj@att.net>
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Sent: Friday, August 28, 2020, 04:43:33 PM CDT
Subject: Atty General: City CAN withhold from me docs re: EMS visits to my solo-occupancy apt. in 2019-2020
From: John Kevin McMillan, public-information requestor and longstanding criminal-law complainant with the Austin Police Department in the alleged continuous-and-still-continuing-daily-and-year-round-and-multi-year APD Sex Crimes and Personal Injury Crimes Case
16-1340923 --- an alleged felony-crimes case that dates back to the year 2016, when I resided as a rent-paying official tenant at the Northland-owned and Northland-managed Village Oaks Apartments in northwest Austin, with Northland being a highly-regarded for-profit corporation headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts, a city that directly borders Boston.
My current solo-occupancy efficiency-rental-apartment home address ever since June 21, 2019:
Pebble Creek Apartments, 8805 North Plaza Drive, Apt. 2418, Bldg. 17, Austin, TX 78753.
FYI to each of you government officials and civic leaders on the following very surprising development involving the Attorney General of Texas and the City of Austin Law Department that resulted in myself being denied a copy from the City Government of Austin of ANY document of any type that makes any reference to or contains any report about the one total Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services, or EMS, visit to my current apartment unit (Apt. 2418 at Pebble Creek Apartments in north Austin) that I have ever requested on any occasion since or including the day I moved into my current unit in late June of 2019.
I might add that it is also the ONLY EMS visit to my current apartment unit that I myself ever directly saw or witnessed with my own eyes---a May 9, 2020, early-morning EMS visit that resulted in my being transported by ambulance with my prior consent to St. David's North Austin Medical Center for medical assistance relating to what was later identified to me from a CAT scan performed on me inside the emergency room there as having been very severe inflammation of my pancreas.
My EMS-provided visit to that hospital in May 2020 did NOT relate to the COVID-19 pandemic that the City of Austin Law Department cited in seeking formal permission from the Attorney General of Texas for withholding from me cited responsive documents on file with the local EMS that each directly referred to me. In fact, I myself specifically tested "negative" for COVID-19 inside that hospital during that visit, as a medical staff member volunteered to me.
Aside from the May 9, 2020, Austin-Travis County EMS visit to my current apartment unit, no other visit to my current apartment unit in Building 17 was ever at any time authorized by me, or by by any manager for my apartment complex, or by the owner of my current apartment complex, Pebble Creek Apartments, where I have resided alone as the ONLY official rent-paying tenant and ONLY management-team-approved occupant on a continuous and uninterrupted basis ever since mid-day June 21, 2019.
My applicable May 21, 2020, online public-information request (City of Austin-assigned ID Number C069056-052120) to the City of Austin that led to an appeal to the Attorney General by the City Law Department here in Austin, Texas, had stated that I sought, quote: "a copy of any and all medical records or service-call records or reports or findings or communications with other government agencies that were generated in a context relating to or referring to any and all of the Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services visits to the second-floor Apartment 2418 in the multi-unit Building 17 at Pebble Creek Apartments, 8805 North Plaza Drive in north Austin, that occurred at any time during the multi-month time period from 9 a.m. June 21, 2019, through 9 a.m. May 22, 2020."
Below is the exactly quoted text of the following August 12, 2020, ruling letter from the Attorney General of Texas, a copy of which has been provided to me online by the City of Austin---not by the Attorney General (at least not thus far). That ruling letter referred to courtesy carbon-copies being provided to "2 Requestors", I being one of them, but did not cite me or the other requestor by name.
Nor did that final line of that August 12 letter from the Attorney General cite my own home address in Austin, with a current or former reporter for a news magazine here in Austin, "The Texas Tribune", that individual being someone I have never met before and do not know, having been previously directly cited to me by name by the City of Austin Law Department as having been an also applicable "requestor" citedly pertinent to the City's appeal on this to the Texas Attorney General, with inclusion of that current or former news media professional in that appeal letter having been cited by the City as based on a separate public-information request that individual had apparently submitted to the City of Austin.
_____
KEN PAXTON
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF TEXAS
Post Office Box 12548,
Mr. Neal Falgoust
Assistant City Attorney
City of Austin
P.O. Box 1088
Austin, Texas 78711-2548
You ask whether certain information is subject to required public disclosure under the Public Information Act (the “Act”), chapter 552 of the Government Code. Your request was assigned ID# 839708 (PIR Nos. C069056 and C069122).
The City of Austin (the “city”) received two requests from different requestors for certain records pertaining to two specified addresses during defined periods of time. You claim the submitted information is excepted from disclosure under section 552.101 of the Government Code. We have considered the exception you claim and reviewed the submitted representative sample of information.1 Footnote 1 : We assume the “representative sample” of records submitted to this office is truly representative of the requested records as a whole. See Open Records Decision Nos. 499 (1988), 497 (1988). This open records letter does not reach, and therefore does not authorize the withholding of, any other requested records to the extent that those records contain substantially different types of information than that submitted to this office.
Section 552.101 of the Government Code excepts from disclosure “information considered to be confidential by law, either constitutional, statutory, or by judicial decision.”
Gov’t Code § 552.101. Section 552.101 encompasses information made confidential by other statutes, such as section 81.046 of the Health and Safety Code, which provides in part as follows:
(a) Report, records, and information received from any source, including from a federal agency or from another state, furnished to a public health district, a health authority, a local health department, or the [Texas Department of State Health Services] that relate to cases or suspected cases of diseases or health conditions are confidential and may be used only for the purposes of this chapter.
(b) Reports, records, and information relating to cases or suspected cases of diseases or health conditions are not public information under [the Act], and may not be released or made public on subpoena or otherwise except as provided by Subsections (c), (d), and (f).
Health & Safety Code § 81.046(a), (b). In Open Records Decision No. 577 (1990), this office concluded any information acquired or created during an investigation under chapter 81 of the Health and Safety Code is confidential and may not be released unless an exception set out in the statute applies. See ORD 577; Health & Safety Code § 81.046(b)-(d), (f).
You state Austin Public Health is authorized to conduct investigations under chapter 81 of the Health and Safety Code. You explain the submitted information was created or acquired by Austin Public Health during investigations under chapter 81. Based upon your representations and our review, we agree the submitted information is subject to section 81.046. Further, you state none of the release provisions of section 81.046 are applicable.
Thus, the city must withhold the submitted information under section 552.101 of the Government Code in conjunction with section 81.046 of the Health and Safety Code.
This letter ruling is limited to the particular information at issue in this request and limited to the facts as presented to us; therefore, this ruling must not be relied upon as a previous determination regarding any other information or any other circumstances.
This ruling triggers important deadlines regarding the rights and responsibilities of the governmental body and of the requestor.
Questions concerning the allowable charges for providing public information under the Public Information Act may be directed to the Cost Rules Administrator of the OAG, toll free, at (888) 672-6787.
Sincerely,
Kimbell Kesling
Assistant Attorney General
Open Records Division
c: 2 Requestors (w/o enclosures)
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