All elected officials or their appropriate designees are required to attend public records training approved by the attorney general (RC 149.43(E)). The training must be for three hours for each term of office for which the elected official was appointed or elected to the public office (RC 109.43(B)).
The Ohio Attorney General’s Office (OAG) has recently made the training available online. As an alternative to a live three-hour certification training session, public officials or their designees can take the training online. The training consists of 13 separate YouTube videos, which do not have to be viewed all at once. After each training lesson, you’ll be asked to take a short quiz for that training module. Once you’ve completed the training videos, quizzes and the course evaluation, a certificate of completion will be available that can be printed.
For the attorneys who read our blog, the online version of the training has also been approved by the Supreme Court of Ohio’s Commission on Continuing Legal Education for 3.0 general self-study activity hours. OAG is the sponsor of this self-study activity.
To begin your online training, register and login at: https://sunshinelaw.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/.
If you have general questions about the training requirement, please contact OSBA’s division of legal services. If you have specific questions about the online training, please contact the OAG’s Public Records Unit at (614) 466-2872.