Who are you?

Anyone can look at Arizona public records, but most state agencies are asking, 'Why'?

If you want to look at a public record in Arizona, be prepared to explain why.

When asked to produce records in a recent statewide audit, more than half the agencies visited wanted to know what was behind the request. About 12 percent would not consider releasing records until they got an answer.

Arizona's Open Records Law sets no such requirement.

"Case law says the motivation shouldn't drive whether you're going to provide public records or not," said Marvin Sondag, an assistant city attorney who for 13 years has advised Phoenix police on what to release or withhold.

People who ask for records, he said, "don't have to have a good reason - or any reason at all. It could be just idle curiosity."

Sondag said no law specifically bars an official from asking why someone wants a record, but requiring an answer is a different matter.

"I think the difference is when you're basically hinging the disclosure of records on inquiries that aren't allowed by the law," he said. "That's where it turns."

Others think even asking is going too far.

When someone stole her company's roadside house-for-sale signs, real estate agent Linda Larkin wanted to know what Pima County sheriff's detectives found out.

When she asked for a case report, officials wanted to know her relationship to the case. She got the report within a few minutes of disclosing that she worked for the firm victimized by the thefts.

"I thought that was kind of nosy on their part," Larkin said.

Officials have a duty to provide records, she said, not ask about people's motives: "They may have a chilling effect on some people who don't want to reveal that."

Questions about who wants to see records and why may be intended just to route the request to the right person, said Deputy Steve Easton, a sheriff's spokesman who expects the records office to refer requests from news reporters to him.

Sometimes mechanisms for keeping records out of the wrong hands can be puzzling.

One auditor in the statewide survey, Arizona Daily Star Managing Editor Bobbie Jo Buel, identified herself only by name when she requested a routine bicycle theft report in a visit to South Tucson.

Police there asked if she was a victim or a relative of the victim, and she said no.

A department employee turned the record over, but not before stamping it in red - with a warning that under the law, it could be disclosed only to other crime-fighting agencies and was "not intended for disclosure to the press or other news media."