The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has received over 220 complaints of open records violations this year, with the numbers increasing since a public complaint form launched, officials said.

Anthony Sykes, the assistant attorney general in the Public Access Counselor unit, said between January and July, 128 complaints were received, or about 18 per month. After the complaint form launched in August after House Bill 2163 became law in May, that number has grown to be about 25 per month.

The law gave the Attorney General’s Office the power to enforce violations of the Open Records Act and outlined a review process for denied public records requests through a complaint form monitored by the Public Access Counselor Unit. The agency can seek “legal enforcement” when government entities fail to comply with open records laws.

Editor’s note: This story is part of Oklahoma Voice’s end-of-year series that provides updates to some stories that captured the interest of Oklahomans in 2025.

Filing a complaint for review is prohibited if the person requesting to inspect a public record is doing so for “commercial purposes.”

About 42% of the complaints to the form were against a state agency, state records show. A third pertained to a city while nearly a quarter of complaints were about a county. Records show 2% of complaints were about a school board.

Records from the Attorney General’s Office show that 70 of the complaints to the portal have been closed. Over 30 of these were deemed “unfounded” complaints while decisions were issued in nine were issued a decision. Records showed another 12 were resolved by the parties involved and 10 considered were “not timely.” Some complaints were also closed because they were either withdrawn or for commercial purposes.

Two-thirds of complaint filers were members of the public, 26% were members of the media and the rest were either commercial complaints or classified as “attorney discovery,” according to data provided by the Attorney General’s Office.

Of the remaining 18 open complaints, 10 have a decision being drafted, three are awaiting a response from an agency and five were incomplete, records showed.

Sykes is the only full-time employee assigned to this unit but he said the agency is working to onboard another employee for administrative support.

“The complaint form has been a great improvement as it details the circumstances and explains that the complaint must be accompanied by the request for records and any response by the public body,” Sykes said in a statement. “This allows the complaint process to begin with a more complete picture.”

The agency evaluates a complaint to determine whether further action is needed within seven business days, Sykes said. The time needed to resolve complaints varies “substantially,” he said, but all complaints are resolved 60 days after the public body has responded.

“It’s also worth noting that many of these complaints involve multiple violations or issues, so the total number of concerns we’re addressing is even higher than these figures suggest,” he said.

The Attorney General’s Office issues a decision, or “formal advisement,” on a complaint to the public body in question, Sykes said.

Some decisions issued have included complaints against the Attorney General’s Office, the Oklahoma Department of Health, the City of Coweta, the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety, the City of Oklahoma City, and the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

The complaints were made by journalists, private citizens and attorneys.

In all of the provided examples, Sykes wrote that the public body either had had a “reasonable” response to the complainant, was justified in denying public records, or had “a good faith legal basis to deny access to the information and records referenced in the Complaint.”