Background
Brian M. Ames submitted a public-records request to the Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA)—a regional council of governments that administers municipal tax ordinances for member municipalities in Ohio—seeking, among other categories, “the rule(s) for notification of meetings required by R.C. 121.22(F) in effect for the years 2023, 2024, and 2025.” Ames sent the request by email to what RITA later claimed was an inactive address, received no response, and eventually served RITA by certified mail. Having still received no production of records, Ames filed a mandamus complaint in the Eighth District Court of Appeals in April 2025.
The day after Ames filed suit, RITA’s chief legal counsel responded by providing him with a copy of RITA’s bylaws—specifically Section 7, which addresses public meetings—and stated that the bylaws contained the rules he had requested. Ames argued the bylaws were non-responsive because, in his view, they did not comply with R.C. 121.22(F)’s requirement that a public body establish a reasonable method for the public to determine meeting times and places.
The Eighth District granted summary judgment to RITA, denied the writ as moot, denied Ames’s request for statutory damages under R.C. 149.43(C)(3), and denied his motion to strike exhibits RITA had submitted relating to the other three categories of records. Ames appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court as of right.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed unanimously. The court held that RITA’s production of its bylaws—which contained its rules for notification of meetings—was a proper and responsive answer to Ames’s public-records request. Because RITA provided those records after the mandamus action was filed, the Eighth District correctly found the writ moot. The court further held that Ames’s true complaint was not about the existence or production of records, but rather that RITA’s bylaws failed to comply with R.C. 121.22(F). That argument amounts to a request for declaratory relief, which is outside a court of appeals’ original jurisdiction.
On statutory damages, the court found that because RITA had properly responded to the records request, Ames presented no independent basis—such as an untimely response—to support a damages award. His statutory-damages arguments rested entirely on the same contention that RITA’s response was non-responsive, which the court had already rejected. The court also affirmed the denial of the motion to strike, finding no abuse of discretion, since copies of records produced in response to a public-records request are relevant to the mootness question even for categories Ames no longer contested.
The court emphasized two foundational public-records principles: a public office has no duty to provide records that do not exist, and it has no duty to create new documents to satisfy a records request. RITA could not be compelled to rewrite its bylaws to conform to Ames’s view of what R.C. 121.22(F) requires.
Key Takeaways
- A mandamus action seeking production of public records becomes moot when the public office produces the requested records after the complaint is filed—even if the requester disputes the adequacy of those records on substantive grounds.
- A public office satisfies a records request by providing the records it actually has; it has no obligation to create new documents or modify existing ones to conform to a requester’s view of what the law requires.
- A requester who argues that produced records fail to comply with a statute is essentially seeking a declaratory judgment—relief that is outside a court of appeals’ original jurisdiction in a mandamus proceeding.
- Statutory damages under R.C. 149.43(C)(3) require a showing that the public office failed to properly respond; where the office’s response was adequate, damages are unavailable even if the underlying records request prompted litigation.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the boundaries between Ohio’s Public Records Act and other avenues of legal challenge. Requesters who believe a public body’s internal rules or policies are substantively deficient cannot use a records-request mandamus action as a vehicle to litigate that deficiency—they must pursue a declaratory-judgment action in a court of proper jurisdiction. The ruling clarifies that “responsiveness” is judged by whether the agency produced records it possesses, not by whether those records satisfy the requester’s policy preferences.
For public agencies, the case provides a practical reminder: promptly producing relevant records after a mandamus complaint is filed will ordinarily moot the writ and defeat statutory-damages claims, provided the production is genuinely responsive. For practitioners representing requesters, the decision signals that challenges to the legal adequacy of an agency’s underlying rules must be raised through separate litigation rather than folded into a public-records mandamus proceeding.