A FAC led amicus brief joined by more than 90 newspapers and other publications was filed Thursday in an appeal of a Brown Act law suit involving  the Tulare County Board of Supervisors.  The suit challenges the supervisors’ practice of holding lunchtime meetings–regularly and often–that were nonpublic and held without notification to the public or media.

The plaintiffs–the late Rich McKee, CNPA and the Visalia Times-Delta–argued that the lunches, which were charged to the county government and attended by a county lawyer, were “meetings” regulated by the Brown Act, which generally requires that meetings be publicly held and conducted according to an agenda that is made public in advance. The Superior Court disagreed and dismissed the suit. The appeal is from that dismissal.

It is highly unusual for so many amici curiae–literally, “friends of the court”– to sign an amicus brief. The FAC brief was signed by newspapers ranging from the state’s biggest dailies (LA Times, San Jose Mercury News, Sacramento Bee) to its smallest weekly newspapers, as well as news wires, out-of-state media associations and national media/First Amendment organizations.

Amici were attracted by concern about enforcing the Brown Act  as well as the opportunity to honor open-government advocate Rich McKee, who passed away last week. “The First Amendment Coalition is proud to be lead amicus on this excellent brief authored by lawyers Duffy Carolan and Fred Glasser at the Davis Wright Tremaine law firm,” FAC Executive Director Peter Scheer said Thursday. “The participation of so many amici is a wonderful way to honor the memory of Rich McKee.”

Rich McKee was a co-founder of CalAware (together with Terry Francke) in 2004 and a former Board President of FAC. Starting in the early 1990s, McKee filed many Brown Act and Public Records Act lawsuits against local governments, particularly in Southern California.

FAC’s amicus brief can be viewed here.

The First Amendment Coalition and a number of newspapers across the state are appealing a case involving an alleged Brown Act violation by the Tulare County Board of Supervisors who held 30 lunch meetings without public participation. A superior court judge dismissed the suit as lacking factual basis to proceed to trial.

The appeal is seen as a way to honor the memory of open-government advocate and CalAware co-founder Rich McKee who died last month. McKee filed the original suit in March of 2010. -db

From the Fresno Bee, May 4, 2011.

Full story

Download (PDF, 954.52KB)

The First Amendment Coalition (FAC) has filed suit against the city of Calabasas to compel disclosure of an inspection report on conditions in an unoccupied residential property potentially posing health risks to nearby residents. The city, despite repeated requests, has refused to release a copy of the report to a neighbor, Gail Reznik, and other local residents who are concerned about toxic mold contamination found in the derelict property.

FAC and Reznik are co-petitioners in the lawsuit, filed yesterday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleging that Calabasas violated the California Public Records Act (CPRA) in refusing to disclose the inspection report and related records.

Calabasas claims it needn’t turn over the records because they are subject to the attorney-client privilege and a CPRA exemption for investigatory records in criminal cases. FAC and Reznik argue that these exemptions are inapplicable and can’t justify withholding from residents crucial information about an environmental hazard in their immediate neighborhood.

“When citizens face a threat to their family’s health, government has an obligation, both moral and legal, to be forthcoming with information,” said Peter Scheer, executive director of FAC. “We got involved in this matter because Calabasas officials seemed to think that if they ignored Ms. Reznik, she would go away and nothing would happen,” said Scheer. “Well, they’re wrong.”

Reznik’s concerns over the potential health threats posed by the nearby vacant and neglected property began in 2008, when the County of Los Angeles issued a citation for insect and rodent infestation, decaying trash, and other problems at the  deteriorating property. She took her concerns to the Calabasas City Council, which authorized an inspection of the property. Two years later Calabasas City Prosecutor Steven Rosenblit informed Reznik that, in addition to numerous other code violations, a court-ordered inspection of the property had discovered mold that “is hazardous to persons who enter without protective clothing and breathing apparatus.”

Reznik’s earlier fears were confirmed by Rosenblit’s emails. After neighbors, and later a family member, became ill, Reznik repeatedly requested a copy of the mold expert’s report and lab analysis identifying the type of mold found in the property.  The city, which  had turned over responsibility for the clean up to the property’s owner, said no. Reznik made several attempts to challenge the denial, but was turned down each time.

“If there truly was no health risk, an abatement order for demolition and removal of all interior contents would not have been approved by the court,” said Reznik.  “I felt it was egregious that the City Council members and City Attorney, not one of whom is a health care professional, could risk the well being of citizens they were elected to represent and protect.

“FAC and Reznik are represented by Judy Alexander, an attorney in Soquel CA.  “Even if the CPRA exemptions claimed by Calabasas are applicable, which they are not, they can be waived and should have been here, because the public interest in knowing the facts so far outweighs any interest in hiding them,” said Alexander.

Click here to read and/or download the following court documents :

• Civil Case Cover Sheet — FAC and Gail Resnik v. City of Calabasas
• Civil Cover Addendum — FAC and Gail Resnik v. City of Calabasas
• Petition for a Writ of Mandate: FAC and Gail Reznik vs. City of Calabasas
• Petition Exhibits – FAC And Gail Resnik v. City of Calabasas
• FAC and Resnik vs. City of Calabasas: Points and Authorities

The US Supreme Court yesterday heard arguments in a FOIA personnel exemption case,  Milner v. Department of the Navy.  FAC along with 19 other news organizations filed an amicus brief for the case.

The Washington Post‘s and other news accounts suggest the Court was skeptical of the government’s effort to expand a seemingly narrow FOIA exemption in order to withhold records that, while potentially sensitive, are not sensitive enough to warrant classification.

At issue is a FOIA request for unclassified Navy maps  showing the extent of damage expected in the event of an explosion at a military ammunition dump on an island off the coast of Washington state. The Navy denied the request. The Obama administration is defending that decision under a FOIA provision that exempts from disclosure documents “related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency.”

FAC signed on to an amicus brief, prepared by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, that opposes the government’s position.

BRIEF AMICI CURIAE OF THE REPORTERS
COMMITTEE FOR FREEDOM OF THE
PRESS AND NINETEEN NEWS MEDIA
ORGANIZATIONS IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER (Pdf.)

High court questions broad use of FOIA exemption

Documents released this week to FAC show CalPERS sensed trouble with its East Palo Alto real estate investment about two years before Page Mill’s collapse.

Documents: CalPERS’ $100 million Page Mill loss
Pension fund lost $100 million by investing in Page Mill Properties of Palo Alto

by Gennady Sheyner
Palo Alto Online StaffIn December 2008, about nine months before Page Mill Properties lost control of its 1,800 housing units in East Palo Alto, Warren Otto of Stockbridge Capital Group wrote an e-mail Page Mill Properties CEO David Taran asking him about a $50 million debt in Page Mills’ books.

Otto had recently been hired by CalPERS, the nation’s largest retirement fund, to analyze Page Mill’s East Palo Alto portfolio, which the Palo Alto-based company began accumulating in 2007. By late 2008, the company had steeply raised rents, displacing many of the residents in the Woodland Park neighborhood and enraging tenant activists. The Palo Alto-based company had also launched a flurry of lawsuits against East Palo Alto, challenging the city’s rent-control ordinance.

CalPERS, which stands for California Public Employees’ Retirement System and provides retirement and health benefit services to more than 1.6 million members, had invested $100 million in the Page Mill Properties II portfolio in 2006. As time wore on, however, it became concerned about Page Mill’s strategy and the fallout its investment has caused in the media and among tenants.

As Otto began to comb through Page Mill’s numbers in 2008, the due date for a $50 million loan to Wachovia (which later was acquired by Wells Fargo) caught his attention.

“David, I’d like to talk with you about the status of the debt on the portfolio whenever you have a minute,” Otto wrote. “If you have an abstract which summarizes the terms of the debt that would be helpful. If not, I will need a copy of the debt documents. We are concerned about the $50 million of debt which apparently comes due before the term of the loan is over. Thanks.”

The e-mail was one of hundreds of documents CalPERS was forced to release this week because of a legal challenge from the nonprofit group First Amendment Coalition. The 1,175 pages include business reports, Page Mill memorandums, complaints from Page Mill tenants and e-mail exchanges between CalPERS officials and Page Mill executives in the frantic months before September 2009, when the company ran out of money and its property managers vacated the apartment buildings, leaving trash cans overflowing and confused residents lined up near empty rental offices, wondering what to do with their rent checks.

The documents, which the First Amendment Coalition posted on its website, indicate that CalPERS sensed trouble with its East Palo Alto investment about two years before Page Mill’s collapse but was largely powerless to do anything about it. By late 2008, Page Mill — which had become East Palo Alto’s biggest landlord — was entangled in litigation and fighting off allegations from displaced tenants and tenant activists, who called its strategy “predatory equity.”

According to a private-placement memorandum that Page Mill tried to keep confidential but was made public in a lawsuit from other Page Mill investors earlier this year, the company saw the East Palo Alto neighborhood as an area “poised for growth and gentrification.” Its plans included developing condominiums, fixing up the infrastructure and “further developing community-oriented retail and service business.”

By late 2008, CalPERS had grown weary of what Taran called its “opportunistic investment” and asked Otto to take a closer look at the company’s numbers. The move irked some Page Mill executives. In June 2009, Otto wrote Page Mill a letter saying it “seems a bit counter-intuitive to be incurring thousands of dollars of expenses to evict good long-term tenants when the portfolio is already suffering from high vacancy” and asked for an explanation.

Page Mill’s General Counsel James Shore wrote back three days later, essentially asking Otto to trust the company.

“As I explained in our conversation last week, I cannot stress enough how difficult it is to have our business judgment second guessed by CalPERS every time a tenant or a tenant advocate makes an inquiry to CalPERS,” Shore wrote. “Warren, during these very challenging economic times, it is more important than ever that the General Partner stays focused on the investments and is not questioned or interfered with whenever some dissident contacts CalPERS.”

CalPERS officials also demanded more information about the $50 million payment Page Mill was due to pay Wachovia. Laurie Weir, CalPERS’ portfolio manager, had sent a letter to Taran in March 2009 asking about the payment.

“We are concerned about the risks this debt maturity poses for our partnership investments with you,” Weir wrote. “Could you please share with us your plans for handling this debt maturity and how this debt maturity could impact our partnership strategy?”

But despite their growing anxiety, CalPERS officials had few options for saving their investment. The pension fund’s role as one of several limited partners in the investment gave it little power to do anything about Page Mill’s actions, company officials explained in response to tenant pressure.

In October 2008, Tenants Together organizer Andy Blue wrote a letter to CalPERS saying the pension fund’s investment poses a “significant risk for CalPERS both financially and reputationally.” In March 2009, Priya Mathur, member of the CalPERS Board of Administration, responded by saying the pension fund’s role “limits our ability to act.”

“Nonetheless, staff continues to work to influence Page Mill,” Mathur wrote. “I understand that it feels painfully slow, particularly to the tenants.”

Page Mill’s fortunes in East Palo Alto crashed in August 2009 when it defaulted on its loan to Wells Fargo, which by then owned Wachovia. Page Mill had held meetings with bank officials in spring of 2009 in hopes of getting the loan’s due date extended (in April, Taran wrote that he was “cautiously optimistic that these discussions will be successful”), but the effort ultimately faltered.

On Sept. 4, 2009, CalPERS received an e-mail from state Assemblyman Ira Ruskin’s office describing the chaos and confusion in Page Mill’s buildings, with tenants not knowing whom to call for maintenance or emergency issues.

A month later, Page Mill was considering bankruptcy and reorganization. Taran wrote CalPERS a letter saying the reorganization would require “fresh equity” of about $25 million to $40 million. CalPERS declined.

“As previously indicated, CalPERS has no interest in providing any additional capital to the Partnership,” Weir wrote to Taran. “We trust that the General Partner and its affiliates will manage this process and the property in the best interests of the Partnership and its creditors.”

In March of this year, Wells Fargo officially took ownership of East Palo Alto’s apartments after a foreclosure auction for the properties brought forth no bids.

Though CalPERS’ failed investment in Page Mill attracted major scrutiny from the public and the media, both the pension fund and the company had resisted releasing any documents relating to the investment strategy in East Palo Alto. In January 2008, after CalPERS received multiple requests to publicize Page Mill’s private placement memoranda, Taran wrote a letter to Weir urging her not to disclose “any portion of the PPMs or any other trade secret or confidential information of Page Mill.”

“As you know, the PPMs are trade secrets, highly confidential, and their disclosure to those other than investors could cause significant harm to Page Mill,” he wrote.

CalPERS agreed and responded to one information request by stating that the release of the documents “could negatively affect the return on CalPERS investments” and “jeopardize its relationship with its business partners.”

But San Francisco Superior Court Judge Charlotte W. Woolard rejected CalPERS’ argument that the documents are subject to confidentiality agreements and ruled on Sept. 14 that the pension fund had to release the documents.

Peter Scheer, president of First Amendment Coalition, said CalPERS is expected to produce more documents, which the pension fund claims are subject to the attorney-client privilege. The court would then determine which of these documents could be publicized.

The Superior Court in San Francisco ruled Tuesday in FAC’s favor against CalPERS regarding access to records on their PageMill real estate investment. According to the ruling (FAC v CalPERS Order), the Court agreed with FAC that Govt Code section 6254.26, the exemption for certain information related to “alternative investments,”  does NOT apply to real estate investments. The Court also rejected CalPERS’ arguments that the records were subject to exemption as “trade secrets” or on the basis of CalPERS’ contractual promise of confidentiality to its investment partner.  Reporter Thomas Peele of the San Jose Mercury News filed the following story on the ruling.

CalPERS must release documents detailing $100 million investment loss

By Thomas Peele
Contra Costa Times

Posted: 09/14/2010 01:30:10 PM PDT

Updated: 09/14/2010 02:13:12 PM PDT

SAN FRANCISCO — A judge on Tuesday ordered the mammoth pension fund for state government workers, CalPERS, to release documents detailing how it lost $100 million in a failed East Palo Alto real estate development.

The amount of public money involved clearly tilted the matter to disclosure, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woolard wrote in a six-page decision.

The First Amendment Coalition sued CalPERS in July after it refused to release documents detailing its investment in Page Mill Properties, an East Palo Alto low-income housing development criticized for rental increases that made in unaffordable for the people it was designed to help.

“Score one for David,” said attorney Karl Olson, who represented the San Rafael-based coalition. “It is very gratifying that nonprofit First Amendment Group has won an important victory against the nation’s largest pension fund.”

The Sacramento attorney who represented CalPERS, John T. Kennedy, did not immediately return a message Tuesday.

The case was simply about understanding how CalPERS “made such a big and bad investment,” said Peter Scheer, the coalition’s executive director. He said he hoped to be able to offer the documents electronically to news organizations as soon as the California Public Employees Retirement System releases them. Olson estimated more than 600 pages will be made public.

Included in those records will be the partnership agreement between the pension fund and Page Mill, Olson said. That document, Scheer said, should help unravel how the $100 million investment was lost.

The documents should show “what kind of vetting process” went on at CalPERS in what Scheer described as an uncharacteristic risky real estate investment for the retirement fund.

Scheer and Olson said that as investment markets staggered in recent years, CalPERS has made riskier investments in order to meet its pension obligations. Taxpayers are liable to make up losses, making investment strategies a public concern, they said.

Page Mill was criticized for using East Palo Alto’s rent-control ordinance to hike rents to unaffordable levels for the development’s tenants and replacing them with renters who were able to pay market rates. Scheer said the tactics contradicted with CalPERS’ stated policy of making socially responsible investments, another factor in pursuing disclosure.

CalPERS “claimed to have been blind-sided” by Page Mills’ collapse, Scheer said. The record will help verify that, he added. Nineteen other investors — but not CalPERS — have sued the developer for fraud in Santa Clara County court.

In refusing to release all the investment records the coalition sought earlier this year, CalPERS cited a state law restricting access to details concerning public investments in hedge funds and with venture capitalists.

But Woolard ruled that the law didn’t apply to a traditional real estate investment like Page Mill.

She also wrote that though Page Mill officials asked that some documents be considered private, it does not trump the public’s right of access.

“Assurances of confidentiality cannot convert public records into private records,” she wrote. “CalPERS cannot allow Page Mill or another party to control the release of information.”

CalPERS also claimed that there was little public interest in disclosure, but Woolard rejected that claim, writing, “This is not a good case for asserting interest in nondisclosure because the investment in question is now largely defunct with CalPERS losing the amount it invested.”

Thomas Peele is an investigative reporter who writes about government transparency. Contact him at tpeele@bayareanewsgroup.com.

FAC—Monday July 19—The First Amendment Coalition (FAC) today announced that it has sued CalPERS, the retirement system for California government workers, over access to records about the agency’s ill-fated investment in an East Palo Alto residential real estate development that has gone bust–at a loss to CalPERS of all of its $100 million stake in the controversial venture.

FAC, a nonprofit based in San Rafael, CA, filed suit Friday in San Francisco Superior Court, demanding access under the Public Records Act and Prop 59 to records shedding light on the factors influencing CalPERS’ financial commitment in 2006 to the Page Mill Properties II project. FAC’s initial record request was filed in January. Although CalPERS has turned over other records, it has withheld the offering memorandum and partnership agreement for the Page Mill deal, as well as internal emails and other relevant communications.

CalPERS’ Page Mill investment has been controversial, not only because of its losses, but also because of allegations by community groups that the project’s management sought to oust low-rent tenants in order to increase cash flow needed to finance the project’s heavy debt. CalPERS was a major investor in other real estate developments involving the displacement of low-rent tenants, including the massive $5.4 billion Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town apartment complex in lower Manahattan. CalPERS sunk $500 million into that venture, which has also collapsed.

“The public has an overriding interest in learning how CalPERS could have determined that Page Mill, despite the ouster of poor tenants, the high debt levels and other risks, was an appropriate investment for CalPERS’ assets,” said FAC executive director Peter Scheer. “Only by understanding how the investment was made can the public be confident that CalPERS has made sufficient changes to prevent this from happening again.”

CalPERS has come under increasing scrutiny due to heavy recent losses, which have triggered bills to state and local governments for bigger pension contributions. CalPERS’ performance in 2008 was one of the worst in the country among public pension plans (although, like most public pensions, it returned to profitability in 2009). Oversized real estate losses–nearly double the rate of loss on CalPERS’ investments overall–are a major reason for CalPERS’ financial woes.

CalPERS historically has been a conservative investor in real estate. Starting in 2002, however, CalPERS began a series of real estate deals involving increased leverage, large, concentrated investment positions, the use of recourse debt, and other factors that increased CalPERS’ expected returns. However, they also greatly magnified CalPERS’ risk.

“Socially responsible investors aim to do good and to do well,” said Karl Olson, the lawyer representing FAC in the CalPERS case. “In its disastrous Page Mill investment, CalPERS did bad–by funding the ouster of poor tenants from rent-regulated apartments–and did very badly.”

FAC is a section 501(C)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to freedom of speech, freedom of information, and government accountability. FAC’s website is HERE.

This is the petition filed Friday to initiate the lawsuit against CalPERS.

Here is FAC’s brief in support of the petition.

CONTACTS:

Peter Scheer, FAC
415-886-7081 (direct)
pscheer@firstamendmentcoalition.org

Karl Olson, FAC counsel for CalPERS case
Ram & Olson
415-433-4949
kolson@ramolson.com
===========================

FAC–The First Amendment Coalition has filed suit against the Los Angeles City Council over the Council’s failure to tell the public, in advance, that it was about to consider and vote on layoffs of thousands of government workers. FAC’s suit, claiming a “pattern and practice” of violations of the Brown Act, requests declaratory and injunctive relief.

At issue is a City Council special meeting on February 18 at which the Council voted to reaffirm a prior commitment to eliminate 1,000 city jobs and, on top of that, to lay off 3,000 more city employees. Such a controversial action normally would be expected to draw a large crowd of citizens to the Council meeting, many of whom would request to speak about major layoffs. But that did not happen at the February 18 meeting.

The reason? The published agenda notice for the layoff decision (item 15) described the contemplated action as follows:

“Consideration, discussion and possible actions addressing the Fiscal Year 2009-10 and 2010-11 budget deficits, City staff and others to report on budget balancing matters and possible closed executive session as it may relate to bargaining instructions relative to negotiations with employees and employee matters and to provide for the ability to meet in closed executive session as it may relate to bargaining instructions relative to negotiations with employees and employee organizations.”

“You actually have to try hard to write a meeting notice announcing massive layoffs without giving a clue that any jobs will be eliminated,” said Peter Scheer, FAC’s executive director. “But the LA City Council has truly mastered the art of writing a notice that confuses, misleads, obfuscates–everything but tell the public what is going on,” Scheer said.

The complaint states that, far from this being an isolated event, the identical notice language was used repeatedly for 37 City Council meetings from February 10 to April 21. In fact, Council motions covered by the repeating notice provision were acted on at just four of these meetings—which serves only to compound the confusion of citizens attempting to find out whether an issue they care about will be taken up at a given Council meeting.

On March 16, FAC delivered a letter to the LA City Council demanding a “cure and correction” of the February 18 Brown Act violation. The Los Angeles City Attorney responded that the agenda Item description “adequately informed the public of the subject under consideration.” FAC filed suit on April 28.

FAC is represented in the case by media attorney Judy Alexander, who serves as special litigation counsel to FAC. For a copy FAC’s complaint in the lawsuit, go here.

BY PETER SCHEER–Google’s high-stakes confrontation with China’s government has entered a new, and uncertain, phase. Making good on its threat to cease censorship of search results on its China-based site, Google.cn, Google has begun redirecting users in China to its uncensored Chinese-language site based in Hong Kong, google.com.hk.

China’s censors now face a difficult choice. They could move quickly to block access, within China, to the Hong Kong site. This is not a problem for them technically: China’s internet “firewall” routinely blocks access to Google-owned Youtube, to Twitter, Wickipedia and many other sites deemed a potential threat to the government’s capacity to preempt and contain dissent.

The problem for Chinese authorities, rather, is political. Never before has the government, in its regulation of internet content, cut off access to a website regularly used by so many of its own citizens. Past censorship decisions have involved denying access to websites used only by small numbers of Chinese. The Chinese people, for the most part, have been unaware of what the government does not let them see. (And the few who do know, often belonging to academic and government elites, can maintain their access using proxy servers and other technical work-arounds.)

This is different. China’s internet market is so vast that, even though Google ranks as the country’s Number 2 search engine (with a market share of approximately 35 percent), Google users in China number some 140 million. This means that the decision to cut off access to google.com.hk would be a decision to tell 140 million citizens that they are no longer trusted to view an information source to which they have had, since 2005, essentially unrestricted access.

Although internet users in China may be vaguely aware that they are permitted to see only a redacted version of the internet, this would be the first time that users, by the millions, will know what it is that the government forbids them to see. And having seen it, many could question the legitimacy of the government’s censorship policy. This is the prospect–unprecedented in modern China–that must be giving government authorities pause.

My prediction, for what it’s worth, is that, because of these considerations, China will decide not to block all access to google.com.hk. Instead, it will choose the less confrontational strategy of slowly crippling Google’s Hong Kong-based website.

China will manipulate the firewall to degrade the site’s performance. Uncensored search results will be available, but only for Chinese users willing to wait extra seconds compared to Baidu.com and other “domestic” Chinese search engines operating, under censorship, inside the firewall. Under these circumstances, Google’s market share in China will decline steadily until the company is no longer a relevant player in the market.

This is China’s ultimate leverage over western internet companies trying to do business in China while locating servers for their websites outside the firewall. In degrading the performance of such companies’ websites, China assures that the firms cannot be competitive in China–unless they agree to play by China’s rules, chief among them being rules requiring self-censorship.

China’s government will be betting that, by gradually undermining Google in this way, it can exclude Google from China without having to contend with 140 million disgruntled Google customers.

Here’s hoping the censors lose their bet.

===============
Peter Scheer is Executive Director of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy organization which has petitioned the federal government to challenge China’s internet censorship before the WTO.

Nov 6, 2009—In a case filed by the First Amendment Coalition, the Modesto Bee and the California Newspaper Publishers Association, a California Superior Court has ruled that county governments, upon request, must disclose–by name–their retirees’ pension payments.

The Superior Court for Stanislaus County reasoned that the public interest in access to government employees’ pensions outweighs the public interest in protecting the confidentiality of that information.

In 2007 the California Supreme Court ruled that government employees’ salaries–including employee names–are public records that must be disclosed under the Public Records Act.  Since then, governments have split on the issue of access to the pensions of government retirees. Yesterday’s Superior Court decision is the result of litigation undertaken to clarify that pension information must be made public.

To access a copy of the Superior Court’s decision in Modesto Bee v. Stanislaus County Employees’ Retirement Association, go here. FAC and the other petitioners are represented by Karl Olson of Ram & Olson in San Francisco. (Olson is also on FAC’s Board of Directors.)

The Texas Open Meetings Act supported by an FAC amicus brief withstood a constitutional challenge by former city council members who asserted the law violated their rights to exchange e-mail messages discussing city business in secret.

September 10, 2009
After four years of litigation, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Dallas (5th Cir.) today  dismissed Rangra vs. Brown as moot. Although both Alpine, Texas, councilors’ terms had ended, Avinash Rangra remained an active plaintiff in the case. In dismissing the case, 16 judges held Rangra lacked the proper standing to sue, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) reported today.

Earlier this week, FAC filed our own amicus brief written by Rex Heinke and Teresa Wang of the LA office of Akin Gump to defend local government open-meeting laws, like California’s Brown Act, from a potentially devastating national legal challenge.

Rangra v. Brown is a rehearing of an appellate decision that struck down Texas’ open meetings law–which is very similar to CA’s Brown Act–on 1st Amdt grounds. The panel held that the open meetings law, by forcing members of a legislative body to confer in public, abridged their right to speak to each other IN PRIVATE about government business.

According to the RCFP article on the case by Corinna Zarek :

“The only judge who dissented in the vote was Judge James L. Dennis, who authored an earlier panel decision holding that open meetings laws must pass a higher constitutional threshold to remain good law and that elected officials should receive full First Amendment protection of speech pursuant to their official duties. That panel decision was vacated when the entire court agreed to review the case.

“Dennis wrote that the full court’s dismissal of the case as moot is “incorrect, injudicious and result oriented.” He said that although Rangra was no longer on city council, he “continues to live under the threat of prosecution and under the damage that was done to him” by the indictment for violating the law. The indictments against Rangra and fellow councilwoman Anna Monclova had been dropped years ago.

“In his dissent, Dennis asserted that this case is “excepted from the mootness doctrine as presenting a ‘wrong capable of repetition yet evading review.’”  He stated the full court’s rationale for dismissing the case was that “it would overtax the judges of this court to prepare for oral argument” and that a “heavy work load never justifies giving short shrift to a case” such as this.

“U.S. District Court Judge Robert Junell in Midland, Texas, upheld the constitutionality of the open meetings law in late 2006, but that decision was overturned in April of this year by a panel on the Fifth Circuit that, in addition to Dennis, included Judges Jacques L. Weiner and Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale — who both agreed that the case was moot in today’s ruling.”

The First Amendment Coalition has filed an amicus brief in Citizens United v. FEC, the US Supreme Court case involving First Amendment challenges to federal campaign finance laws regulating corporate political speech during elections.

The Court held this case over for re-argument in September and invited briefing on broader issues than the case originally had been thought to present—including whether to overturn several leading Supreme Court precedents  in the campaign finance-freedom of speech area.

Our brief urges the Court to invalidate speech-regulation of nonprofit corporations that are independent of the candidates and independent of regulated for-profit corporations. We contend the Court need not, at least at this stage, invalidate FEC regulations of all for-profit corporations.

CFAC’s brief was written by the law firm of Bostwick & Jassy in LA: 

Download (PDF, 177.19KB)

BERKELEY, CA, June 16 —The California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) and MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization that shows the connection between money and politics, announced today that they have settled their freedom of information lawsuit against the Office of Legislative Counsel of California, having gained the object of their suit: a machine-readable database of how state lawmakers vote.

“It shouldn’t take a lawsuit for the government to realize its data belongs to the people,” said Daniel Newman, MAPLight.org’s executive director. “In this new era of highlighting transparency, we hope this settlement serves as an example to city and state governments across the country to provide public access to public information.”

California Legislative data, including how lawmakers vote, legislation in progress, and laws, was previously available to the public only in a plain-text format on the California Legislative Information website. That data was suitable for viewing and printing, but only allowed access to Legislative data at a rate of one bill at a time, making analysis lengthy and cumbersome.

“No longer can legislators use the complexity of the legislative process, and the sheer volume of bills and votes, to hide the favors they are doing for special interests that fund their elections,” said Peter Scheer, executive director of CFAC. “The more voters know about the influence of money on their elected representatives, the less tolerant they will be.”

CFAC and MAPLight.org requested copies of the electronic database used to create the website, but the Office of the Legislative Counsel refused their requests, and in December 2008 the two groups filed a lawsuit under the California Public Records Act (PRA) to obtain the electronic database records.

Shortly after CFAC and MAPLight.org filed their lawsuit, the Office of the Legislative Counsel introduced on its website a “structured database” which contains information about Legislators’ votes in a structured, machine-readable format. Having concluded that the newly-available database not only contains the same information previously available on the text-based website, but is updated in a timely manner and maintained in a format that lends itself to use and analysis not only by CFAC and MAPLight.org, but by any interested member of the public, CFAC and MAPLight.org entered into a settlement agreement with the Office of the Legislative Counsel.

As part of the settlement agreement, which is effective today, CFAC and MAPLight.org agreed to dismiss their lawsuit and agreed that they will not re-file any similar suit so long as the Legislative Counsel maintains the recently-created “structured database” at the same useful functional level at which it exists today. The new database can be downloaded by any member of the public at http://www.leginfo.ca.gov.

“Governments are increasingly maintaining information about their activities in sophisticated electronic formats, and the public is entitled to that information in those same sophisticated formats,” said Rachel Matteo-Boehm, a partner at Holme, Roberts & Owen LLP in San Francisco who represented CFAC and MAPLight.org in the PRA lawsuit. “We are pleased that the Office of the Legislative Counsel has recognized this as well.”

The settlement agreement also provides that the Office of the Legislative Counsel will release another database, known as the “Inquire” database that MAPLight.org and CFAC seek to review. The agreement also stipulates that the Office of the Legislative Counsel will pay $65,000 towards MAPLight.org’s and CFAC’s attorney’s fees.

MAPLight.org will use the structured database to create a new government transparency website, MAPLight.org California. The website will be modeled after the award-winning MAPLight.org Congress website, which provides journalists, citizens, and non-profit groups with a host of government transparency tools, including a Money and Votes database that shows the connection between campaign donations and legislative votes. MAPLight.org California’s free online database will combine all money given to members of the California state legislature with how each politician votes on every bill, revealing patterns of money and influence never before possible to see.

Background: On July 1, 2008, MAPLight.org requested basic bill information (bill text, bill history, bill status, legislator voting records, legislative calendar, etc.) in electronic database format from the California Office of Legislative Counsel for use in its MAPLight.org California website. MAPLight.org’s request was made pursuant to the organization’s rights under the PRA, the Legislative Open Records Act (LORA), and California Government Code 10248, which states that the Office of Legislative Counsel is required to make available, for each current legislative session, certain bill information in electronic format. On July 16, 2008, MAPLight.org’s request was denied.

On August 15, 2008, CFAC Executive Director Peter Scheer sent a letter to the Office of Legislative Counsel, under the PRA and LORA, requesting a copy of the same records requested by MAPLight.org. On August 18, 2008, CFAC’s request was similarly denied. On October 9, 2008, legal counsel for CFAC and MAPLight.org had a telephone conversation with the Office of Legislative Counsel asking them to reconsider their denial of the PRA requests. On October 23, 2008, legal counsel for CFAC and MAPLight.org had a subsequent conversation with the Office of Legislative Counsel in which counsel was informed that the requests were denied. On December 3, 2008, CFAC and MAPLight.org filed their PRA lawsuit in the Superior Court of California, County of Sacramento.

About CFAC: CFAC is an award-winning, nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest organization dedicated to advancing free speech, more open and accountable government, and public participation in civic affairs. The Coalition’s activities include: strategic litigation to enhance First Amendment rights for the largest number of citizens; free one-on-one legal consultations for journalists, activists, academics and ordinary individuals frustrated in the exercise of their First Amendment rights; educational and informational programs offered online, in books, and in conferences; legislative oversight of bills affecting access to government; and public advocacy.

This is one of a series of legal cases that CFAC has recently filed to break down monopoly control by government agencies over electronic information created with tax dollars. For more information, go to: http://www.cfac.org.

About MAPLight.org: MAPLight.org is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization based in Berkeley, California. Its mission is to illuminate the connection between Money and Politics (MAP) using our groundbreaking database of campaign contributions and legislative votes. MAPLight.org combines data from the Federal Election Commission, the Center for Responsive Politics, GovTrack.us, the National Institute on Money in State Politics (NIMSP), the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission and other sources to better inform Americans and local and national media about the role of special-interest money in our political system. Hundreds of newspapers, TV stations, radio shows and online news sites have cited MAPLight.org’s research, including CNN, the public radio show Marketplace, Harper’s magazine, The Washington Post, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal. MAPLight.org has received numerous awards including a Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism; a James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter and a Webby nomination for best Politics website. To learn more, visit: MAPLight.org.

Media Contact:
MAPLight.org
Pamela Heisey
Communications Director
pamela@maplight.org
Mobile: 415.299.0898

CALIFORNIA FIRST AMENDMENT COALITION
Peter Scheer
Executive Director
ps@cfac.org
415.460.5060
Mobile: 415.505.5024

Schwarzenegger’s Calendars

CFAC sued Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to obtain his calendars of meetings and those of his top aides. CFAC argued that a state Supreme Court decision sustaining a denial of access to these records was implicitly overturned by Prop 59, which the governor had championed during the election. Schwarzenegger settled, agreeing to turn over nearly all the calendars.

• Legal Documents
• Commentary
• In the news

Legal Documents

Verified Petition for Writ of Mandate

Governor’s Office Settlement Letter

CFAC Commentary

Sunshine and shadow; State must operate in the open to maintain its accountability

By Peter Scheer

What’s the governor doing? What’s the California Supreme Court doing? What, for that matter, is Michael Jackson doing?

The public’s right to know has a bearing on all of those questions. Access to the deliberations of government agencies and to government records and information is critical not just for journalists and lawyers but for citizens who want to hold government and public officials accountable. That access for the public is improving on at least one front in California while being thwarted on others.

[Read More]

In the News

Sacramento Bee
Move by coalition behind Prop. 59 is first test of open-government law.
Buoyed by voters’ broadening of the public’s right to know government’s business, a nonprofit advocacy group has formally requested access to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appointment book. If the California First Amendment Coalition is successful – either by Schwarzenegger’s agreement to provide the information or a court’s order – it could weaken a key court decision open-government supporters say has blocked reams of information they believe should be public.

Associated Press
Associated Press article on CFAC records request
Only days after California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 59 to increase the public’s ability to inspect government records, a media-backed group is asking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to release all his appointment calendars, schedules and meeting logs since taking office Nov. 17.

Los Angeles Times
Saying he has no secrets, Schwarzenegger reveals appointment records. Corporate executives and union leaders have been frequent visitors.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released 350 edited pages of private calendar and appointment records Wednesday, showing that he met frequently with corporate executives and union leaders in his first year in office, took part in dozens of fundraisers and spoke to various special interests whose fortunes could depend on state action. Until now, the governor has made public the barest information about his daily schedule, typically through terse press releases that stated he spent the day in private meetings.But saying he has nothing to hide, Schwarzenegger chose to comply with a request submitted by the California First Amendment Coalition under the Public Records Act

San Francisco Chronicle
Tantalizing peek at governor’s calendars. Budget meetings vie with interviews with Access Hollywood
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration provided a glimpse behind the somewhat secretive workings of California’s celebrity governorship, releasing Wednesday his official calendars that show days mixing routine budget meetings with movie-star media appearances. The calendars — the first to be released by a sitting California governor, according to administration officials — document how Schwarzenegger’s political and celebrity lives intertwine.

San Francisco Chronicle
Far from tied down in the Capitol, Governor spends much of his time outside Sacramento, according to calendars.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger presented the Legislature with an ambitious agenda to shake up state government and demanded that lawmakers quickly enact his proposals.Yet even as Schwarzenegger has alternately accused legislators of stalling his agenda and insisted he wants to negotiate with them, the governor has spent most of his time away from the Capitol.

San Jose Mercury News
Prop. 59 opening government doors
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has promised something that Gray Davis and previous governors resisted. He agreed to show the public who he’s meeting with and why.
More than a goodwill gesture, the governor is complying with the overwhelming wishes of voters who just passed Proposition 59, which broadened the public’s right to know.

Sacramento Bee
Calendar release is good, but not enough
The most frustrating thing about Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor is how often he promises to be revolutionary and instead turns out to be, if not ordinary, certainly not the mold-breaking force he has the potential to become. Time after time he feints toward the radical, only to pull back at the last minute. The latest example is his release of edited versions of his schedule as governor. During the campaign, this was part of Schwarzenegger’s promise to open government to “the people.” He pledged to mimic Florida, where almost everything the government does is open to inspection, in something close to real time.

The Desert Sun
Schwarzenegger keeps his word, opens calendar to media. His willingness to open records is a public service
In one of the most straightforward moves of his one-year tenure as governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger has opened his calendar from his first year in office to let the public peek at his appointment book. None of his predecessors ever agreed to such scrutiny. Schwarzenegger’s move bodes well for the public’s access to government.

Sacramento Bee
Governor makes time for contributors
A year’s worth of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office calendars released Wednesday paints a picture of a chief executive who meets regularly with corporate campaign donors and some of the “special interests” he routinely rips, but also devotes an unusual amount of his time to using the media to sell his message. With its 350-page release, the administration sought credit for being the first to make such information public since a 1991 California Supreme Court case that has limited newspapers’ access to what justices called government’s “deliberative process.” First Amendment advocates said they were pleased Schwarzenegger is taking steps to broaden public access to government as he promised on the campaign trail last year.

Associated Press
Schwarzenegger to release his appointment calendars to public
Attorneys for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote the media-backed California First Amendment Coalition on Wednesday, agreeing to honor its public records request under newly passed Proposition 59 for the governor’s appointments calendar and daily schedule. In a letter to CFAC Executive Director Peter Scheer, the governor’s legal affairs secretary, Peter Siggins promised to compile records of Schwarzenegger’s first year in office within 35 days, and invited the CFAC to inspect the documents as they are being compiled. Scheer called the letter a “mostly positive” development, saying, “We won’t know what we’re getting until we see what we’re getting. We don’t know the nature of this process.” But he said he was encouraged.

Marin Independent Journal
Profile of CFAC: Opening the state’s books
When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opened his calendar for the world to see late last year, it was at the behest of a little-known nonprofit organization now headquartered in Marin. The 16-year-old California First Amendment Coalition, which moved to San Rafael from Sacramento in July, provides advocacy for public access to government, from local town councils to the highest offices.

CFAC v. CalPERS

CFAC successfully sued CALPERS, California’s public employee retirement system, to force it to disclose the management fees it pays to venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds in which CALPERS invests. Because of its huge size, CALPERS is the de facto standard-setter for the pension industry nationally. When CALPERS settled CFAC’s suit, agreeing to most of the fee disclosures CFAC had sought, public pension plans across the country followed suit.

• Legal Documents
• Press Releases
• In the news

Legal Documents

Petition for Writ of Mandarte to Compel Release of Public Records

Press Releases

CalPERS settles suit filed by CFAC. Pension fund for first time disclosses fess and profits on “private equity” investments. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) publicly disclosed Monday, for the first time, the management fees it pays to individual venture capital, hedge, and other private equity funds in which CalPERS invests. The disclosure was hailed as a major victory for open government by the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC), which had sued CalPERS to get the documents.

The documents reveal millions of dollars in management fees paid to venture funds which, according to press reports, are affiliated with individuals who made campaign contributions to CalPERS board members.

In the News

San Jose Mercury News
CalPERS settles lawsuit over disclosure of fund fees, information released about investment charges
California’s giant pension fund, CalPERS, on Tuesday announced a settlement to the case filed against it by the California First Amendment Coalition, agreeing to disclose information about the money it pays to the managers of its private investments. According to the settlement, which was expected, CalPERS has disclosed the management fees it pays to individual venture capital, hedge and other private equity funds in which it invests. The information covers 2001 through 2003, and CalPERS will disclose information for 2004 and 2005 as it becomes available. The settlement has revealed that CalPERS pays just over $200 million a year in management fees to 416 private equity funds in which it has invested $13.5 billion and plans to invest $21.1 billion. The First Amendment Coalition argues that CalPERS is paying too much in fees, which CalPERS disputes.

Los Angeles Times
CalPERS discloses private equity fees to settle a watchdog suit, the fund agrees to reveal what it pays to have its money managed
A watchdog group settled a lawsuit with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System on Tuesday, forcing the giant pension fund to disclose the fees it pays to have its money managed. The settlement was hailed as a victory by open-government advocates and may give ammunition to critics who contend that CalPERS is fraught with conflicts of interest. Fee details released Tuesday confirmed reports that CalPERS had made payments to partnerships whose principals have contributed to the political campaigns of two CalPERS board members: state Treasurer Phil Angelides and Controller Steve Westly. CalPERS, a $177-billion fund, has made an international name for itself by demanding greater corporate responsibility and transparency from the companies in which it invests.

The Wall Street Journal
Calpers to Disclose Fees Paid, Returns Made on Its Investments
California public retirees for the first time will be able to see how much the nation’s largest pension fund is paying in fees to individual private-equity funds and how much profit or loss each of those funds is generating annually, under terms of a legal settlement reached yesterday. In response to a lawsuit filed by a First Amendment rights group, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or Calpers, agreed to disclose how much it has paid annually from 2001 to 2005 in fees and costs to private-equity firms. Under the settlement, Calpers is preparing spreadsheets that reflect the annual amounts of the profit that it has received from each fund during 1999-2005. The settlement is the latest win for open-records advocates who are seeking greater disclosure of performance and investment data from private-equity firms, which are resisting the push.

Los Angeles Times
Fees to hedge funds and venture capital firms should be made public, a media group says
A group representing California news organizations sued the California Public Employees’ Retirement System on Tuesday, demanding that the giant pension fund reveal the money management fees it pays to individual venture capital firms and hedge funds. The suit places CalPERS on the other side of the table on the hot-button issue of disclosure: The $166-billion fund has been among the most vocal big investors nationwide in agitating for companies to be more forthcoming in their financial accounting and how their boards make decisions. Despite that policy, CalPERS in June refused a request by the California First Amendment Coalition that it itemize what it pays venture capital firms and hedge funds that manage nearly $9 billion in CalPERS assets. In part, the fund cited competitive issues, saying that some investment managers might decline to do business with CalPERS if their fees were made public.

The Wall Street Journal
Calpers Is Sued To Disclose Fees It Pays to Firms
A new round in the so-called transparency wars kicked off yesterday. An open-government advocacy group filed a lawsuit against the California Public Employees’ Retirement System asking that the pension fund disclose the management fees it is charged by private-equity firms that invest on its behalf. The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court in San Francisco, follows a freedom-of-information request that the group filed in May, asking for the data. Calpers refused the request, citing confidentiality agreements, according to the suit. “Calpers spends $500 million in management fees for alternative investments like venture-capital funds,” says Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit group that filed the suit. “That is a great deal of money by any measure.” The pension fund’s constituents, he maintains, “can’t tell whether Calpers is getting a good deal, a bad deal, or whether they are paying too much.”

CFAC v. Santa Clara County

• Decisions
• Legal Documents
• Press Releases
• In the news

Decisions

May 18, 2007
California Superior Court rules in favor of CFAC

Legal briefs and other major pleadings (by date)

California 6th Appellate Court of Appeals

April 11, 2008
CFAC ‘Return’ – Main Merits Brief on Appeal

Download (PDF, 4.53MB)

July 5, 2007
Santa Clara Reply to Preliminary Opposition

June 25, 2007
CFAC Preliminary Opposition to the Appeal

June 12, 2007
Santa Clara Appeal – Legal Arguments

June 12, 2007
Santa Clara Appeal – Facts – Petition for Ex Writ

California Superior Court

March 12, 2007
CFAC Supplemental Reply Brief

Download (PDF, 892.41KB)

March 2, 2007
Santa Clara Supplemental Opposition Brief

Download (PDF, 1.39MB)

February 5, 2007
CFAC Reply Brief

January 30, 2007
Santa Clara Main Opposition Brief

Download (PDF, 1.11MB)

January 19, 2007
CFAC Opening Brief

Download (PDF, 1.26MB)

October 10, 2006
CFAC Petition

Download (PDF, 785.73KB)

Amici Briefs

June 12, 2008
Data Aggregators’ Brief

June 12, 2008
GIS Professionals’ Brief
GIS Amici Curiae

June 12, 2008
Media Organizations’ Brief

June 12, 2008
National Security and Freedom of Technology Brief

Opposition Amici Brief

June 12, 2008
Association of Counties and League of Cities Brief

July 2, 2008
CFAC’s Response to Opposition Amici Brief

Press Releases

May 22, 2007

In landmark open records case, court rules Santa Clara County must disclose parcel map data in “Geographic Information System”

Santa Clara County must make public–at minimal cost and without restrictions on use–its digital “basemap” showing parcel boundaries, the assessor’s parcel number for each parcel, parcel address, and other similar data for all propertis in the county, a court has ruled.

In a lawsuit filed by the California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC), the Superior Court for Santa Clara County affirmed that the basemap, which is the foundation for the county’s Geographic Information System, or GIS, is a public record to which the county can no longer limit access to just a small number of purchasers willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars in fees. (The case is CFAC v. Santa Clara County, No. 1-06-CV-072630.)

GIS technology provides a 3-D display, on maps, of information in a relational database. In effect, it allows a visual depiction, with precise locations, of the results of statistical analyses. Think Google Earth but with a local focus and specialized data. Used together with other publicly available data, the basemap allows citizens to monitor their local government on matters ranging from property tax assessments to zoning variances to street repairs.

The basemap will also enable journalists to do reporting that would not otherwise be possible. For example, reporters and bloggers could write stories that assess whether poor neighborhoods are being shortchanged for road repairs. Data on crime statistics, census information, political party affiliations, campaign contributions, environmental hazards and school test score results could be analyzed to spot trends and to test the validity of government policy assumptions and prescriptions.

“This landmark decision vindicates our view that government agencies may not claim exclusive control over records that are created with tax dollars,” said Peter Scheer, CFAC executive director. “While we encourage agencies to create databases and adapt public records to new technologies, the resulting applications cannot be run as monopoly businesses,” Scheer said.

“Affordable access to the GIS basemap means that the media and ordinary citizens will have a powerful tool for judging government performance in such areas as tax assessments, zoning variances and decisions on real estate development,” said Rachel Matteo-Boehm, CFAC’s lead counsel in the Santa Clara case. Ms. Matteo-Boehm is with the San Francisco office of Holme Roberts & Owen LLP.

In a 27-page decision, Superior Court Judge James P. Kleinberg rejected the county’s arguments that it could withhold the GIS basemap files because of their claimed status as computer software, and because the files allegedly contain “trade secrets” protected from disclosure under state and federal law. The court concluded the basemap consisted of data, not software. And it found that the county, by selling the basemap to private entities, had waived any trade secret protection to which the records otherwise might be entitled. The ruling was issued May 18 but not received by the parties until yesterday. (A copy is attached.)

The court found that federal copyright protection did not permit the county to deny a valid request under California’s Public Records Act. The court also turned aside the county’s attempt to avoid releasing the records by getting them designated “Critical Infrastructure Information” (CII) by the federal Department of Homeland Security. The court noted that this designation was sought only after CFAC filed suit, and despite the county’s past sales of the GIS basemap to 15 purchasers, five of them private companies.

The court said that, while some of the data in the basemap–relating to the location of easements for pipelines carrying water from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir–might possibly qualify for the CII designation, the county had not met its burden of withholding the entire basemap on that basis. CFAC, while expressing doubt about the sensitivity of the information about the Hetch-Hetchy water easements, said in its briefs that it would be willing to accept the basemap with the pipeline information stripped out, if necessary.

Only 13 of California’s 58 counties currently limit access to their GIS by charging substantially more than the cost of reproduction for access. Of these, Santa Clara’s fees are the highest–over $100,000 for purchase of the full basemap. Orange County observes a similar policy. Both Los Angeles and San Diego Counties recently lifted restriction and use fees for access to their GIS basemaps.

“Santa Clara, because of its exorbitantly high GIS fees, was seen as a crucial obstacle, in California and nationally, to public access,” said CFAC’s Scheer. “As a result of this court victory, we hope and expect that Orange County and other holdouts will reconsider their GIS policies,” he said

CFAC is a nonprofit public interest organization dedicated to advancing free speech and open-government rights. A membership organization, CFAC’s activities include educational and informational programs, strategic litigation, legal information and consultation services, and legislative oversight of bills affecting free speech. CFAC’s members are newspapers and other news organizations, bloggers, libraries, civic organizations, academics, freelance journalists, community activists–and ordinary individuals seeking help in asserting rights of citizenship.

CFAC’s Board consists of people involved in both “old” and “new” media, including, in the latter category, recently elected members Nicole Wong, associate general counsel for Google, and Neil Budde, general manager of Yahoo! News.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

CFAC Sues Santa Clara County for Release of Computerized Mapping Data.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006—CFAC filed suit against Santa Clara County to force it to make public computer-readable mapping data that the county now sells to a handful of customers at eye-popping fees that can run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The suit, filed in Santa Clara County Superior, claims that the digital files are public documents, copies of which must be released under the California Public records Act and Prop 59, the open-government constitutional amendment enacted in 2004. The county, in its denial of the records request, argues (among other things) that the mapping data are proprietary and copyrighted.

The mapping data are part of Santa Clara County’s geographic information system, or GIS, which provides a computerized, visual depiction of all land in the county. The so-called “base map,” which CFAC requested, is the foundation of the GIS, and shows such things as the boundaries of all property parcels, the tax assessor’s parcel number for all properties, and the street address for each parcel.

To this can be added many other categories of data, including utilities, soil survey information, ambulance response areas, geological fault lines, flood zones, noise areas and more.

Think “Google Earth,” but for just Santa Clara.

Under current policies, the county makes the base map data available to the public, but at fees that are vastly higher than what the Public Records Act allows. The fee for county-wide parcel information, for example, is approximately $250,000. In addition, those receiving the data are required by the county to sign a non-
disclosure agreement.

“The county, through the combination of prohibitively high fees and restrictions on use of the data, has created a monopoly,” said Peter Scheer, CFAC’s executive director. “Our law suit seeks to break down this monopoly and make the mapping data available to the people who paid for it—namely, the public,” Scheer said.

Scheer said that if the county base map were readily available, citizens would be able to see if their property is fairly assessed, or if they are being overcharged for home or flood insurance. “Access to the base map makes it possible for citizens to see hold local government more accountable,” he said.

CFAC also argues that making GIS mapping data generally available will benefit the public by leveling the playing field for regulatory decisions. “Real estate developers can afford to pay for the GIS database, but residents living near a development site don’t have access because they can’t pay the huge license fees,” said CFAC counsel Rachel Matteo-Boehm, a lawyer with the firm of Holme Roberts & Owen LLP in San Francisco.

Public disclosure of the GIS base map will “provide the public with an essential tool for monitoring its government,” she said.

Most counties in California have GIS systems. Policies regarding public access vary from county to county. San Diego County recently abandoned its practice of charging hefty license fees for use of the county GIS, having concluded, on the basis of a 2005 Attorney General legal opinion, that the mapping data were public records and had to be released.

In the News

June 14, 2007
San Jose Mercury News
County fights ruling on access to map database
Santa Clara County has appealed a Superior Court ruling in hopes of blocking easy distribution to the public of its digital mapping database, which includes detailed parcel information. The court ruled in May that the county should make the geographical database available to the public at a reasonable cost.

May 22, 2007
San Jose Mercury News
Judge rules Santa Clara County must release map database
A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge has ruled that Santa Clara County should make its geographical mapping database that includes detailed parcel information available to the public at a reasonable cost. The decision is an outgrowth of a lawsuit filed last October against the county by the watchdog group California First Amendment Coalition. The group said county officials overcharge for the mapping information, making it prohibitive to many groups and companies that seek it for a variety of uses.

April 3, 2007
San Jose Mercury News
Santa Clara County stops selling its data for electronic maps, claims security risk
After years of selling data to make electronic maps of Santa Clara County, officials have temporarily stopped the practice, saying they didn’t want some of the information to end up in the hands of terrorists. The decision came as a lawsuit over the price the county charges for the information is entering its final stages. CFAC, the plaintiff in the case, says the county is using homeland security as a smoke screen so it can continue to sell the information at a high price.

October 20, 2006
Geospatial Solutions
Santa Clara County sued for release of computerized mapping data
An open-government organization has filed suit against Santa Clara County, California, to force it to make publicly available more reasonably priced computer-readable mapping data.

CFAC Taking on the Great Firewall of China

CFAC has initiated a proceeding that will attempt to use international trade laws to force the government of China to end its censorship of the internet. In a submission and presentation to the Office of the US Trade Representative, CFAC has petitioned for the filing of a complaint with the World Trade Organization, of which China became a member in 2001.

Our (concededly novel) theory: that China’s censorship of the internet, the most pervasive and systematic system of censorship in the world, violates China’s obligations under treaties it signed (the GATT, covering free trade in goods, and the GATS, covering services) in order to join the WTO. We contend China must end its censorship or risk limitations on its access to US markets.

Think of this as the biggest access-to-information and free speech case in history. If the Trade Representative agrees with CFAC’s petition and files a complaint with the WTO, and if the WTO rules against China–big “ifs,” to be sure–some 1.2 billion Chinese citizens will, for the first time, have unfiltered access to information about the outside world, via the internet.

CFAC is represented by the national law firm of King & Spalding, whose Washington, DC office specializes in trade matters, including several successful cases against China. CFAC is supported in this initiative by a consortium of organizations, including the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, the National Freedom of Information Coalition, and the China Internet Project at UC Berkeley, among others.

• Legal Documents
• CFAC Commentary
• In the news
• Useful Links

Legal Documents

Position Paper of the California First Amendment Coalition: China-Measuring Affecting Market Access For Certain Good and Seervices Delivered Via The Internet

Factual Appendix for the Position Paper of the California First Amendment Coalition

CFAC Briefing Paper: China’s Internet Measures Violate Its WTO Obligations

CFAC Commentary

Using free trade to force China to permit more free speech

By Nick Rahaim

With the Beijing Summer Olympics approaching, the world has turned its focus toward China. From alt/pop musician Bjork lending her support to the Free Tibet movement while recently performing in Shanghai, to Steven Spielberg stepping down as artistic adviser of the Beijing Games citing objections to China’s ties to the Sudanese government, many see this as an opportune moment to put pressure on the People’s Republic. Here at the California First Amendment Coalition, we have had our eyes on China’s “Great Firewall” of internet censorship.

China’s censorship of the internet is well known, yet most arguments against the firewall and steps to counter it take an overtly political approach. CFAC’s approach is economic, using international trade laws to promote the political goals of free speech and freedom of information.

[Read More]

In the News

PC World
Group Seeks WTO Suit Against China
The California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) is pushing the U.S. government to test the argument that international trade laws can be used to end Chinese censorship of the Internet. The free-speech group petitioned the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to bring a complaint against China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing that Chinese censorship impedes the ability of U.S. Internet companies to do business in China.

Useful Links

Websitepulse.com Test Behind the Great Firewall of China

Reporters Without Borders China Profile

OpenNet Initialive China Profile

The California First Amendment Coalition has asked a Superior Court judge in Oakland to rescind his gag order in the highly publicized prosecution of a former BART police officer who is charged with murder for the shooting death–captured on numerous cellphone videos uploaded to Youtube–of Oscar Grant III on New Year’s Day.

The Coalition’s brief, written by Keker & Van Nest lawyers Paven Malhotra and Cody Harris, argues that the judge’s gag order “denies the press a key source of information on a matter of extreme and legitimate public concern.” Lifting the gag would pose no threat to defendant Johannes Mehserle’s right to a fair trial, according to the Coalition, while maintaining the gag denies the public its First Amendment right to crucial information “relating to allegations of police misconduct, ineffective or even dangerous police policies, inadequate training procedures and the relationship between police officers and the community they serve.”

Here is the full brief (as a PDF file).

Here is a news story on the brief by KCBS-5, the San Francisco CBS affiliate.

The California First Amendment Coalition filed suit today against the Legislative Counsel’s office in Sacramento. With our co-petitioner, MAPLight.org, we are seeking a copy of California’s full legislative database–the texts of bills, amendments, votes, dates, etc.—for all legislation.

Although the public currently can access this info one bill at a time through the state’s official website, that does not allow computer-assisted analysis of the data. MAPLight’s service, for example, highlights the influence of money on the legislative process by linking campaign contributions to specific legislative actions. This will prove embarrassing to legislators.

CFAC now has three test cases pending involving access to government-controlled databases. In addition to this one, we have sued Santa Clara County for access to its real estate parcel map database (for use in digital mapping applications), and we have sued the CA State Bar for access to data about Bar applicants needed by academic researchers studying affirmative action in higher education (the data, if we get it, to be given to researchers on both sides of this controversial issue).

Here’s an AP story about the latest suit:

Here’s a copy of our petition.

Here’s our press release:

CFAC’s suit was filed in Superior Court in Sacramento. CFAC lawyer Rachel Matteo-Boehm represents both CFAC and MAPLight in the case.

-PS

The California First Amendment Coalition is sponsoring legislation to limit the risk assumed by those who resort to court to force local and state agencies to comply with the open records and open meetings laws. The bill, SB 786, has been introduced by State Senator Leland Yee.

SB 786 is directed to lawsuits in which a government agency, defending itself from a claim of violation of the Public Records Act, the Brown Act or the Bagley-Keene Act, invokes the state anti-SLAPP law in order to both dismiss the suit and to seek an award of attorney’s fees against the plaintiff. SB 786 would maintain agencies’ option to invoke the anti-SLAPP law, but it would bar award of attorney’s fees to the government unless the plaintiff’s lawsuit is frivolous.

The suit is prompted by a 2008 Court of Appeal decision in a lawsuit brought by two individuals and Calaware, a Sacramento-based nonprofit organization, against the Orange Unified School Board, alleging violations of (among other things) the Brown Act and Public Records Act. In addition to affirming the school district’s defense on the merits, the appeals court sustained under the anti-SLAPP Act an award of attorney’s fees–over $80,000–in favor of Orange Unified.

Unless reversed through legislation, the Court of Appeal decision could expose plaintiffs in open-government lawsuits to crippling penalties–in the form of attorney’s fee awards–even through the suits are legally and factually plausible and filed in good faith. CFAC President James Chadwick, in a May 7, 2009 letter to Senator Yee, said:

“The perversity of applying the anti-SLAPP statute to claims brought pursuant to California’s open government law is that it turns those laws on their head, discouraging rather than encouraging enforcement, and hence discouraging rather than encouraging compliance. . .

If the problem created by the application of the anti-SLAPP statute to these claims is not addressed, few will have the courage to pursue claims under California’s open government laws, and noncompliance will become even more ubiquitous. Indeed, it puts a punitive weapon in the hands of public agency members using public taxes for which they are not truly held accountable to pursue their vengeance. ” -PS

CFAC is awaiting a decision in an appeal of its trial court victory against Santa Clara County for release of the county’s digital “basemap” of real estate parcels, which can be used in various digital mapping applications. Santa Clara County, which has licensed the basemap for tens-of-thousands of dollars, now claims release of the files threatens national security and is barred by federal Homeland Security regulations. Appeals Court judges quizzed lawyers for both sides in a recent hearing.-PS

Here’s an article, in Directions Magazine, about the appeal hearing in this complex case.

CFAC has joined a legal brief urging the federal Court of Appeals in Boston to allow the webcasting of court hearings in a music file-sharing lawsuit filed by the recording industry. Although TV cameras are permitted in California state trial courts on a case-by-case basis, few federal courts have allowed cameras since an experiment in the 1990s—and the discretion of individual federal district court judges to permit cameras is unclear. The brief, filed yesterday, was prepared by lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. -PS

Read an article about the brief in Online Media Daily.

The San Francisco Chronicle and Sacramento Bee have endorsed a lawsuit by the California First Amendment Coalition and MAPlight.org to open the state Legislature’s entire database of bills, votes and amendments to public view. The state currently allows the public to see only one bill at a time — in a form that makes it difficult if not impossible to analyze the information with computer techniques.

In a signed column on Dec. 7, Chronicle Editorial Page Editor John Diaz said:

It should not take a lawsuit to open the windows into the legislative activity within the state Capitol. These are the people we elect, operating with the money we provide them, to perform the people’s business.

But a lawsuit filed last week by MAPLight.org in Berkeley and the California First Amendment Coalition in San Rafael underscores the degree to which the California Legislature has been corrupted by arrogance and allegiance to special interests.

The lawsuit’s request is simple and straightforward. It demands that the legislative counsel follow the law by providing the public with access to databases it possesses on legislative records, including voting records.

Those records are available today, but in a limited and cumbersome way.

“It is ridiculous,” said Dan Newman, executive director of MAPLight, which has been pressing the legislative counsel to provide access to the digital files of voting records, bill texts and other records. “It takes incredible resources to pry something out of their hands.”

There is no mystery about why California politicians might be reluctant to cooperate with MAPLight. The nonprofit, nonpartisan group has set up an easy-to-navigate way for voters to track the connection between contributions and votes in Congress. It hopes to do the same in the state Capitol.

I have no doubt the group would find rich terrain in Sacramento. As readers of our editorial pages over the years know, one of my pet peeves is the tendency of legislators to fail to vote – a practice known as “laying off” or “taking a walk” – on particularly controversial consumer and environmental issues. Time after time, I have found a direct correlation between nonvoting legislators and the flow of special-interest contributions. In one particularly notorious example from 2003, legislators on a key Assembly committee were serving desserts to lobbyists at a private-home fundraiser (advertised as a “Night of Chocolate Decadence”) just before a bill to re-regulate energy came up for a vote. The bill died when 11 of the 14 committee members failed to vote.

As someone who has tried to track voting records, I know that the current site ( www.leginfo.com) is woefully incomplete – to the point of being misleading – on roll-call votes. Under the Assembly rules, members who missed a vote are allowed to “add on” after the outcome has been decided. And they do – I’ve caught them, and named names, over the years. Even more outrageously, hours after a measure’s defeat or passage, a member can change his or her vote from “yes” to “no” – and vice versa – as long as it does not change the outcome. Again, this is not a theoretical possibility. I’ve seen it happen – and reported on it.

Such vote-switching is not easy to document now. The leginfo.com site only includes the final (sanitized) roll call. I’ve been able to find them only when a legislator or aide – typically one who is outraged by the shenanigans over a bill he or she has been working on – provides me with a printout of the legislative record at the moment the roll call closed, and a bill is passed or defeated. It is subject to change before the public can view it.

“That is just scandalous and infuriating,” Newman said of the voting-changing. “It just shows the value of transparency.”

As much as I’m cheering on this lawsuit, which was filed in Sacramento County Superior Court last week, I hope the result will be online access to the full history of voting records. I believe that Californians should know which legislators are not doing their jobs – not voting on important bills. And I believe an elected official’s constituents should know whether he or she voted when a measure was still in doubt or “added on” – or even changed a vote – after the fact.

This lawsuit is against the legislative counsel, but the real culprit here is the California Legislature, which could fix this problem in a Sacramento minute if only it had the will. Public-records law seems to make clear that records should be available in their electronic format. If legislators have any question about the clarity of the law, they have the ability to change it.

On Friday, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, suggested that a resolution may be coming soon.

“When there is no additional burden on government to turn over the information in a user-friendly format, we ought to be stretching and going out of our way to do that,” Steinberg said by phone.

This lawsuit needs to be settled. Fast. Its mere existence is a blight on the California Legislature.

On Dec. 5, the Bee argued that the database of legislative actions belongs to the public — whether the Legislature likes it or not:

If you want to know how your legislator voted on one particular bill, it’s easy enough to find that out. Look up the bill number online and follow the prompts that guide you to all the committee and floor votes taken on that piece of legislation. They will reveal which legislators voted for or against it.

But if you wanted to know something more, like how your representative voted on all bills related to air pollution or to teacher tenure issues or to auto insurance – well, good luck. Obtaining that kind of information could take days or weeks of research.

And if you wanted to do even more sophisticated tracking – to find patterns in a legislator’s votes that showed possible connections between campaign contributions from a particular interest group with a stake in legislation, forget it. It’s almost impossible.

The data is there to answer those questions, and it’s supposed to be public. But so far, the Legislature’s lawyer has refused to release it in a format that enables citizens to easily track voting trends over time or make correlations between votes and campaign contributions.

Legislative Counsel Diane Boyer-Vine has made print-outs of such data available, but refuses to release the electronic database used to compile the information. She claims that the California Public Records Act “does not require disclosure of the database itself.”

Political watchdog and open-records groups rightly dispute that narrow interpretation of the law. Two of those groups – MAPLight .org, a Berkeley-based group that follows money in politics at the congressional level and wants to do the same in California – and the California First Amendment Coalition – have sued to force the Legislature to give up its electronic voting records database. They argue that the law requires government to release public information in any format they possess.

A glance at MAPLight’s Web site (www.MAPLight.org) makes it clear why California legislators might want to block access to the data the organization seeks. Using an electronic database, MAPLight has collected and aggregated congressional campaign contribution and voting records in a way that allows the public to see with a click of the mouse which interest groups are the biggest campaign contributors to individual lawmakers and how lawmakers vote on issues that those contributors care about. No doubt some of that information will prove embarrassing to some legislators, but that’s no reason to deny the public access to it.

This struggle for basic information about how the Legislature functions ought to be an easy early test for Darrell Steinberg, the new Senate president pro tem. It’s absurd that the public should have to sue to get this information. Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass ought to order their lawyers to make the data available now. Who contributes to legislative campaigns, and how much, is clearly public information. How legislators vote is public too.

Moreover, the public pays for all the computers and software that records, collects and stores that information. Citizens own it and they ought to have access to it in any format they choose.

AB 1978
AB 1978, a Bill that would have closed public access to ‘basemap’ data for Geographic Information Systems (GIS), put forth by Assemblymember Jose Solorio, was dropped after opposition from the GIS/GeoData and freedom of information communities.

GIS “basemap” data is used to create the base layer for all local computer mapping. The bill sought to exempt from the Public Records Act, which requires all government data to be available to the public, “metadata, listings of metadata and assembled model data”.

CFAC has filed suit to force Santa Clara County to make available its county basemap as a public record, subject only to payment of modest copying fees. CFAC won in Superior Court and the case is now on appeal. AB 1978 would have effectively overturned that pro-disclosure ruling.

The GIS community was rallied by Bruce Joffe, a GIS expert and consultant to CFAC in the Santa Clara case, to push Assemblymember Solorio to drop the bill. Following publication of an open letter in Directions Magazine, the technologically-saavy GIS community quickly spread the word through geo-data blogs and on such sites as GIS Café, GeoSpatial Solutons, GeoPlace and POB Magazine.

The bill didn’t make it out of committee and Solorio, in a statement from his office, said he “decided not to push it forward”.

AB 1855
AB 1855 began as a bill about police interrogation tactics, but, after it lost that focus, Assemblymember Anthony Portantino considered adding two amendments that would have made police officer names and salaries private information.

The State Supreme Court ruled last year that salaries and officer names (though not personal contact info) are public information and subject to public disclosure laws. The AB 1855 amendments would have reversed these rulings.

The California Newspaper Publishers Association, CFAC and other organizations opposed the bill. Assemblymember Portantino ultimately decided to pull the Amendments.

SB 1370
In 2006, LAUSD newspaper advisor, Darryl Adams, allowed a student to write an editorial criticizing the school’s random search policy and subsequently found himself removed from his position as newspaper advisor, basketball coach and even basketball game announcer. Stories like this lead State Senator Leland Yee to propose SB 1370.

SB 1370 prohibits retaliation towards adults who are protecting a student’s right to exercise freedom of speech or freedom of the press.

Even now, in this edition of CFAC’s Flash Newsletter, is a story about a Vacaville newspaper advisor who allowed a student to write an opinion piece about a controversy at the high school. For this decision, the advisor claioms he lost his advisory role.

SB 1370, which would combat both these instances of abuse, passed out of the State Senate in a vote of 35-2 and is now awaiting approval from the Assembly

AB 2296
After a spate of violent attacks by animal-rights activists, including an assault on a researcher’s husband at her home outside University of California-Santa Cruz and a Molotov cocktail thrown through the home of a University of California-Los Angeles researcher, Assemblymember Gene Mullin proposed AB 2296, sponsored by the University of California, which would keep private all names of animal researchers.

However, the bill was construed broadly to include any “animal enterprise employees” and to permit the non-disclosure of “any information relating to animal research activities”. It is currently under close scrutiny by freedom of information groups, including CFAC.

The bill was approved by the original Committee and was passed on to the Appropriations Committee for further review. After CFAC and other organizations’ advocacy, the bill will be rewritten to take into account the public disclosure considerations, while still allowing for the protection of the researchers.

SB 1696
The Senate also recently passed SB 1696, revising the Public Records Act to prohibit government agencies from making contractual agreements with third parties that, as part of the agreement, keep information about the agreement confidential.

SB 1696 was approved by the State Senate in a vote of 33-1 and is awaiting a vote in the Assembly.

–Kelly Dunleavy, CFAC staff

By Peter Scheer

In a stunning victory for freedom of information advocates, a California appeals court has sustained a public right of access to a government database that makes possible highly accurate digital mapping.

Holding that Santa Clara County must make public its geographic information system (GIS) parcel “basemap,” which shows real estate parcel boundaries, appraisals, and other property data, a unanimous Court of Appeal rejected arguments that U.S. Homeland Security regulations and Federal Copyright protection trump the public’s right of access under the California Public Records Act.

The decision, issued yesterday, is County of Santa Clara v. California First Amendment Coalition. (You can read the opinion, as a PDF file, here.)
It grows out of a lawsuit filed by the Coalition in 2006, following denial of its request to the county for a copy of the parcel basemap under the Public Records Act. The county at that time offered the basemap for sale at extremely high fees (approximately $250,000 for county-wide coverage). The Coalition argued that, since the basemap had been created with taxpayer funds, it belonged to the public and should be made available free (or, at most, for a nominal copying charge).

The Santa Clara decision has potentially far-reaching implications. As governments at all levels increasingly maintain records in digital form, legal issues concerning proprietary rights in, and control over, government databases are front and center in freedom of information disputes. Moreover, the Court of Appeal’s reasoning on the county’s Homeland Security and copyright claims is not necessarily limited to the Santa Clara County parcel base map. It could also apply to virtually any government-created databases, at the local level and statewide, in California and in other states.

For these reasons the case attracted the participation, as amici curiae in support of the Coalition, of dozens of media companies and associations, organizations focused on national security and digital rights access policies, and individuals and companies specializing in digital mapping using geographic information systems.

After the Coalition filed its lawsuit, the US Department of Homeland Security, at the county’s request, designated the basemap as “protected critical infrastructure information.” In the Court of Appeal, the county argued that this designation under federal regulations had the legal effect of “preempting” state access laws. The Court, in the first judicial ruling in the country addressing this issue, disagreed. The federal regulations under the Critical Infrastructure Information Act, the Court held, apply to information given by the federal government to a state or county government, but not the other way around.

The county also claimed that it has a federal copyright in the basemap. It argued that copyright protection authorizes the county to condition release of records, under freedom of information laws like California’s Public Records Act, with restrictions on the requester’s use of the records or sharing of the records with others. The Court rejected this claim, agreeing with the Coalition that state freedom of information laws preclude a state agency’s reliance on federal copyright unless state law clearly permits it for the specific records in dispute.

The Court stated: “We conclude that end user restrictions [on disclosed records] are incompatible with the purposes and operation of the CPRA.”

The county also argued, in a variation of the Homeland Security claim, that even if withholding of the basemap was not categorically justified under state or federal law, it could still be withheld because, under the Public Records Act, the public interest in withholding the information–due to national security concerns–outweighed the public interest in having access to the basemap. According to the county, the basemap is potentially of value to terrorists who could use the data to locate pipes flowing from the Hetch Hetchy rewservoir.

But the Court, pointing out that the county had previously sold the basemap to at least 18 customers, was unimpressed with the national security argument, while crediting the value to the public of ready access to the basemap for various applications, including tracking the performance of county government officials in property appraisals and other government functions.

The Coalition is represented in the Santa Clara litigation by attorney Rachel Matteo-Boehm and colleagues Roger Myers and Kyle Schriner with the San Francisco office of Holme Roberts & Owen.

The Coalition is a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to free speech and open government. For more information about this case, contact the Coalition’s executive director, Peter Scheer at: ps@cfac.org // 415.460.5060

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