President Bush acted lawfully in sending his gubernatorial papers 118 miles away to his father’s presidential library instead of the state archives across the street from the Texas Capitol, but the documents are state property and subject to Texas’ open-records law, states the Texas attorney general, John Cornyn.
At the behest of Mr. Bush, who was then governor, Texas enacted a law in 1997 that gave its governors the right to name an alternate depository for their official papers. But details of such a transfer remained murky under the law….
Based on his reading of the Texas law and its legislative history, Mr. Cornyn wrote that the law gives the governor “the power to designate an alternate repository for his gubernatorial records, but according him no other authority to alter the manner in which such records are preserved or made available to the public.”…
This means that the public can now get copies of records from Bush’s Texas administration.
Records should be requested in writing from:
Public Information Access Act Officer
The George Bush Presidential Library and Museum
1000 George Bush Drive West
College Station, TX 77845
Voice: 979-260-9552
Fax: 979-260-9557
Email: library@bush.nara.gov
Web: bushlibrary.tamu.edu
Refer to this sample letter for using the Texas Public Information Access Act.
