¶ 1. In this Access to Public Records Act case, plaintiff appeals the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to defendants, the City of Burlington and the Burlington Police Department (collectively “the City”). The trial court concluded that the City lawfully withheld certain records as relevant to plaintiff’s ongoing traffic court case. Plaintiff argues that summary judgment was inappropriate because the factual record is inadequate, and, in any event, the documents are not relevant to his traffic court case or would be discoverable in that forum. Plaintiff also argues that the City failed to timely respond to his request and wrongfully withheld records. We affirm in part and remand in part for further findings consistent with this opinion.
¶2. The underlying facts are uncontested. On June 25, 2008, plaintiff received a speeding ticket on Route 7 in Burlington. On September 18, 2008, plaintiff sent a public records request to the City requesting twenty-one items, including: documents related tо plaintiff’s traffic ticket; documents about speed recording devices; the citing officer’s employment history and performance records; engineering studies and history concerning the speed limits on Route 7 and elsewhere in Burlington; and documents governing general police procedures as well as more specific protocols for stopping vehicles and issuing tickets. On September 19, 2008, plaintiff filed a motion for discovery in the judicial bureau. In his *474 request, plaintiff notified the judicial bureau that he had sent a public records request to defendants. On September 24, the hearing officer denied the discovery request, in part, explaining:
Discovery is the exception and should not defeat the summary nature of the proceedings. The officer shall provide Mr. Shlansky a copy of the certificate of accuracy and operator manual for any speed measurеment device pertinent to this case. . . . Otherwise, the request for permission to conduct discovery is denied. . . .
This order does not affect Mr. Shlansky’s access to records otherwise available under Vermont’s public records law.
Mr. Shlansky may raise evidentiary issues at the merits hearing and renew any request for discovery/continuance at that time.
Following this order, plaintiff successfully moved to continue the judicial bureau proceedings. Plaintiff’s spеeding ticket case remains unresolved.
¶ 3. Meanwhile, on October 9, 2008, in response to the public records request, defendants, through the Burlington Police Department, denied disclosure of all the documents plaintiff sought, asserting they were exempt as records relevant to plaintiff’s pending traffic court case under the Public Records Act’s litigation exception. The litigation exception, 1 V.S.A. § 317(c)(14), exempts “records which are relevant to litigation to which the public agency is a party of record, provided all such matters shall be available to the public after ruled discoverable by the court before which the litigation is pending, but in any event upon final termination of the litigation.” Plaintiff appealed the blanket denial to the Chief of Police on October 13, 2008. See 1 V.S.A. § 318(c). Pursuant to the appeal, on October 17, 2008, the Chief of Police, citing the need to distinguish “general requests for public records of the City of Burlington from more specific requests concerning the 5:07 a.m. traffic stop of [plaintiff],” disclosed some items, indicated others did not exist, and upheld the denial of certain others under 1 V.S.A. § 317(c)(14). In his response, the Chief of Police noted:
We are sensitive to the concern that pending litigation of traffic tickets is on-going and ever-present for the City of *475 Burlington and that a strict reading of [the case law], temporarily rеstricting all public records requests involving traffic tickets, the Officers involved in the ticketing and the locales, i.e. city streets, could effectively bar public records requests around all traffic concerns.
¶ 4. On October 28, 2008, plaintiff filed suit in superior court, arguing that the City failed to timely respond to his request and improperly withheld public records. In November 2008, the court ordered the City to produce an itemized list of the withheld information. The City complied. Among thе items the City continued to withhold pursuant to the litigation exception were: documents specifically related to plaintiffs June 25, 2008 traffic stop, including an incident report, ticket history, motor vehicle record, and an audio recording; documents related to the citing officer and his personnel record, including training reports, certificates and awards, a job description, correspondence, evaluations, and citizen comрlaints; and a Burlington Police Department Department Directive titled “Command Protocol & Department Rules.” The City also specified that the request for documents concerning the setting of speed limits on the part of Shelburne Road within Burlington city limits was denied due to the pending litigation between the parties but also asserted that those same documents were “completely irrelevant to Mr. Shlansky’s pending litigation.” The City did provide a copy of a Department Directive titled “Traffic Enforcement — Detecting Violators.” Plaintiff then moved to compel defendants to file a more complete index regarding his ninth request — covering all documents concerning the setting of speed or traffic ordinances — arguing that the first index was not detailed enough to demonstrate which documents were withheld. The trial court denied this request, indicating that it needed to examine all of the facts of the case before determining if more information was necessary.
¶ 5. The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment. The trial court granted the City summary judgment, concluding that plaintiffs records request “falls squarely within the [litigation] exemption” of the Public Records Act. The court found that “the substance and timing of the record request in this case, as well as [plaintiffs] repeated requests while this matter has been pending to delay the traffic court case, makes clear [plaintiffs] purpose is to obtain records for use in that case.” The court held that plaintiff could not use the Public Records Act to obtain records *476 that were denied through the discovery process. Plaintiff now appeals.
¶ 6. In reviewing a grant of summary judgment, this Court uses the same standard as the trial court.
Sawyer v. Spaulding,
¶ 7. Plaintiff argues that the documents are not exempt because they are not relevant to the litigation, or are discoverable in the traffic court case. 1 Plaintiff misapprehends the purpose of the litigation exception.
¶ 8. Vermont’s Public Records Act is not meant to allow an end-run around discovery rules or determinations. Despite the broad policy of facilitating public access to government records, the statute specifically сarves out an exception for documents “relevant to litigation to which the public agency is a party of record.” 1 V.S.A. § 317(c)(14). Here, the outcome of plaintiffs document request hinges specifically on the applicability of the litigation exception to the withheld items and, more generally, on the meaning of the term “relevant” in the context of this exemption. In construing any law, our primary purpose is to implement legislative intent.
Delta Psi Fraternity v. City of Burlington,
¶ 9. We addressed a similar question of statutory interpretation in
Wesco,
in which the plaintiffs sought to obtain documents through a public records request when they were denied access to the same records through discovery during litigation. In rejecting the plaintiffs’ request in
Wesco,
this Court explained that the purpose of § 317(c)(14) is “to place a temporary restriction on the release of otherwise рublicly accessible documents during the pendency of litigation in which the requested documents have relevance.”
¶ 10. We cannot see a connection between the more general administrative materials that were withheld, such as the departmental command protocol and rules, and plaintiff’s individual *478 traffic ticket. 2 Nor can we discern from the record how these withheld documents are “at issue” in plaintiffs traffic ticket case. See id. The City’s seemingly contradictory assertion that documents regarding speed limits in school zones along Route 7 are both “irrelevant” to plaintiff’s traffic case and yet still subject to withholding under the litigation exception for “relevant” documents also illustrates why an apparently illogical decision to withhold documents needs to be explained to the trial court.
¶ 11. In this case, it is apparent from the record that the trial court relied in large part, if not wholly, on the purpose of plaintiff’s records request to determine the relevance of the withheld documents. While it may be that plaintiff seeks documents to use in the judicial bureau proceedings, we have previously held that the identity and motive of the requestor cannot be considered when weighing access to public documents.
Finberg v. Murnane,
*479
¶ 12. We do not overstate the case in saying that open access to governmentаl records is a fundamental precept of our society. “The generation that made the nation thought secrecy in government one of the instruments of Old World tyranny and committed itself to the principle that a democracy cannot function unless the people are permitted to know what their government is up to.”
U.S. Dep’t of Justice v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press,
¶ 13. As the Chief of Police recognized when he denied plaintiffs request, the documents withheld by virtue of plaintiffs traffic ticket dispute would necessarily be withheld from everyone for the pendency of the litigation. Indeed, to do otherwise would make the litigation exception meaningless. Anyone else could simply obtain the withheld materials and then pass them along to plaintiff. Thus, documents withheld under the litigation exception would be unavailable not only to a party to that litigation but also to the public at large. Under the City’s brоad interpretation of the term “relevant” then, a newspaper would presumably be prevented from obtaining general information regarding the day-to-day operations of the police department contained in the withheld documents until plaintiffs traffic ticket was resolved.
¶ 14. In
Wesco,
we observed that the burden placed on the litigants specifically, and on the public generally, was mitigated by the temporary nature of the restriction on thе release of documents.
¶ 15. Plaintiff further contends that defendants’ itemized list of documents withheld in response to his request for “[a]ny and all documents concerning the setting of City speed or traffic ordinances” was deficient. Defendants еxplained:
[T]he request is simply too broad for the City to make any sense of whatsoever; i.e. one way of regarding the request is for the City to produce every piece of paper ever generated which might be concerned with the regulation of motor vehicles within the City of Burlington. As a courtesy to Mr. Shlansky, we addressed his attention to Burlington Code Section 20-39 — Speed Limit Generally.
Plaintiff now claims that defendants must itemize every document that might fаll into this request. We disagree. Plaintiff made a generalized request for documents related to the setting of city speed and traffic ordinances. The City complied with this request by directing plaintiff to sections of the city’s code available to the general public on the city’s Web site. This general information adequately responded to plaintiff’s very general request. Should plaintiff desire more specific information concerning a partiсular speed limit in a particular location, plaintiff is free to make such a request.
¶ 16. With respect to the timeliness of the City’s response, plaintiff alleges that defendants failed to comply with the Public Records Act’s requirements. Plaintiff specifically complains that the City’s response two weeks after his initial request violated the statute’s requirement that “if the custodian considers the record to be exempt . . . the custodian shall so certify in writing,” and this should generally be done “within two business days.” 1 V.S.A. § 318(a)(2). The statute allows extension of the time if “unusual circumstances” exist. Id. § 318(a)(5).
*481
¶ 17. Plaintiff claims that the Act’s time limits are mandatory and that the City’s violation of the time limit creates an independent violation of the Act. The question of whether statutory language is mandatory or directory is one of legislative intent.
In re Mullestein, 148
Vt. 170, 174,
¶ 18. Although we conclude here that remand is necessary for the City to clearly establish the relevance of the documents being withheld, plaintiff’s public-records request should have no bearing on his ongoing traffic litigation. Plaintiff’s traffic court case has been continued for almost two years now, pending the outcome of this public records case. To the extent the judicial bureau hearing officer believed a continuance was required pending the public records rеquest, he was wrong.
¶ 19. Judicial bureau proceedings are intended to be expedited and summary, and therefore, discovery is generally not allowed “without permission of the hearing officer.” V.R.C.P. 80.6(d)(1). While the hearing officer has discretion to grant continuances, the rales limit requests to situations involving “good cause.” V.R.C.P. 80.6(d)(2). In this case, there was no basis to continue plaintiff’s traffic court case based on his public records suit. Vermont’s Public Records Act is not intеnded as a device to delay ongoing litigation or to enlarge the scope of discovery beyond that already provided under the court rules. Wesco,
¶ 20. We decline to address plaintiff’s argument that the City and trial court’s interpretation of the litigation exception violates Article 6 of the Vermont Constitution because plaintiff did not raise the issue in the court below.
Pion v. Bean,
Affirmed with respect to summary judgment on count 1 regarding the timeliness of the City’s response and remanded for further findings with respect to counts 2 and 3.
Notes
Plаintiff concedes that those documents specifically regarding his traffic citation, as well as the citing officer’s personnel records, are “relevant” to the pending litigation but claims they should be available under the Public Records Act because they would have been “discoverable.” Plaintiff is wrong. Under the litigation exception to the Act, an agency may properly withhold relevant documents until they have been “ruled discoverable.” 1 V.S.A. §317(c)(14) (emphasis added). The judicial hearing officer did not order discovery of those documents, and thus, they may properly be withheld as long as they are “relevant” to the pending litigation.
The City would, however, appear to have properly withheld documents concerning the citing officer’s performance evaluations, even in the absence of pending litigation, under 1 V.S.A. § 317(c)(7), which exempts “personal documents relating to an individual, including information in any files maintained to hire, evaluate, promote or discipline any employee of a public agency.”