ELR Citation: ELR 20074
No(s). A104903 (Cal. App. 1st Dist. Apr 5, 2005)

A California appellate court reversed a trial court's award of costs to a company that was delegated the task of preparing the administrative record in a planning association's California Environmental Quality Act claim against a city. The city's delegation of this task to the company without the association's knowledge violated California Public Resources Code §21167.6. The trial court sought a reasonable and pragmatic result by allowing the company to collect the costs the city would have incurred had it prepared the record itself. However, in order to preserve the statutory scheme and purpose of §21167.6(b), the public agency must itself incur and seek recovery of the costs of record preparation when the record is prepared under subdivision (b)(1). Because that did not occur in this case, costs must be denied.