Long Beach and a police officers group are asking an appeals court  to overturn a lower court ruling that the city must provide the names of officers involved in shootings. After a controversial shooting of an unarmed man in Long Beach in 2010, the Los Angeles Times asked the city to provide the identities of officers involved in shootings.

The city contended that the records of shootings were part of personnel files and not for public viewing. The police officers union said the police needed to prevent retaliation against officers who used lethal force in conduct of their duties. -db

From the Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2012, by Victoria Kim.

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Santa Clara is blocking access to the 49ers stadium security report when many are concerned about fan safety after some recent violence at 49ers games.

Interim City Attorney Elizabeth Silver refused a public records request for a report prepared in 2009 by the now retired Santa Clara police chief. The city is concerned about releasing information about staffing that could harm law enforcement efforts. The stadium is set to open in 2015. -db

From the San Jose Mercury News, October 3, 2011, by Lisa Fernandez.

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Frustrated by delays  and heavy redactions, the Los Angeles Times is suing for the release of records concerning the deaths of children under the supervision of the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services. -db

From the Los Angeles Times, September 15, 2011, by Garrett Therolf.

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The practice of withholding the names of police officers who use deadly force is coming under scrutiny from the American Civil Liberties Union, which says it might go to court to enforce the state’s public records act.

On Monday a San Francisco officer shot and killed a 19-year-old man who allegedly fired at police in the city’s Bayview district. On July 3 a BART officer shot a 45-year-old man who allegedly threatened officers with a knife at the Civic Center station.

San Francisco police said they are withholding its officer’s name under department policy. BART said it is restrained by a state Supreme Court decision making police disciplinary actions confidential.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the ACLU is considering legal action under the California Public Records Act. An ACLU attorney told the Chronicle that withholding the names denies the public’s right to ”evaluate whether certain officers are engaged in the repeated, inappropriate use of force.”

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A California appeals court ruled that the pension records of retired county employees are public upholding a lower court ruling that supported government accountability.

The appeals court said the lower court was correct in finding that the  public’s interest in the records outweighed the privacy of retirees. The association representing the retirees argued that disclosure would harm retirees, but the court said the association presented no creditable evidence of harm. -db

From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, June 29, 2011, by Clara Hogan.

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A California appeals court ruled that a public agency does not have to provide public access to  a geographic information system or GIS database under the state’s  Public Records Act. The court denied the Sierra Club’s bid to make public the Orange County Landbase, a parcel map showing over 640,000 parcels with street addresses and names of owners. The county wanted $375,000 for the entire Landbase system.

In their opinion, the court wrote that the county was justified in charging the fee under state law, ” A computer mapping database is not excluded ‘merely’ because it is stored on a computer, but because its development is time-consuming and costly and the Legislature has made a policy decision that local governments should be allowed to recoup some of their development costs.” -db

From Metropolitan News Enterprise, June 1, 2011, by Kenneth Ofgang.

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California state universities have opened the door to transparency for campus foundations with a compromise with state Senator Leland Yee of San Francisco. The agreement will protect the privacy of most donors but allow disclosure of other financial details. The foundations and operations such as campus bookstores would operate under the California Public Records Act.

The agreement came after last year’s dispute between Yee and other open government advocates with the foundation at the CSU Stanislaus who refused to reveal how much they were paying former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to speak at a fundraiser until a judge ordered the disclosure. -db

From the San Francisco Chronicle, May 26, 2011, by Nanette Asimov.

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A California appeals court has ordered Sacramento County’s retirement system to release pension data to the Sacramento Bee. The Bee and the First Amendment Coalition had brought a lawsuit to reveal data about the pension benefits ncluding the names and benefits of individual members.

Said Joyce Terhaar of The Bee, “It’s part of our mission to ensure there’s public scrutiny of government spending. We’ve been reporting for several years that local governments are facing higher pension costs even as they’re cutting public services. In all that reporting, the Sacramento County retirement system was the only system to refuse us key information. We believe this clearly should be available to the public and are glad the court agreed.” -db

From the Sacramento Bee, May 12, 2011, by Brad Branan.

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In an editorial the San Jose Mercury News argued that current law requires state legislators to open their appointment calendars to public scrutiny. The editorial stated that with 40 percent of legislation introduced in the last two-year session written by special interests, it is essential for the public to know how this happens and the people who make it happen.

The editorial said that both the San Jose City Council and mayor have been posting their calendars for years with no ill effects, discrediting arguments that security requires secrecy. -db

From an editorial in the San Jose Mercury News, May 5, 2011.

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California legislators have rejected a request from media and open government groups to open their appointment calendars to the public. In a letter denying the request, the legislators said they could not provide information on appointments out of “concerns regarding privacy, security and legislative privilege.”

The refusal may be challenged in court. The San Jose Mercury News is seeking appointment calendars as part of a project showing that lobbyists and special interests are writing and guiding laws through the legislature. -db

From the San Jose Mercury News, May 4, 2011, by Karen de Sá.

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More than 90 foundations and private enterprises operate on California State University campuses, but it’s unclear how much of the $1.2 billion under their control should be subject to public scrutiny, an internal audit concludes.

The audit panel, consisting of four campus presidents, five finance officers, a vice president and a student, said that accounting procedures are so unclear that public and private money is commingled. What’s more, the law should be changed to bring portions of the operations under the California Public Records Act.

The lack of transparency made headlines last year when the CSU Stanislaus Foundation refused to disclose how much it was paying Sarah Palin for a speaking engagement. A judge ruled the information must be made public.

CSU’s internal audit did not satisfy critics, including state Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat who argues that proposed remedies do not go far enough.

Read the full story here and the report here (attachment A).

In recognition of Sunshine Week, the Sacramento Bee’s Marjie Lundstrom has identified seven Californians who doggedly fight for open government.

Heroes or kooks, she says, they share a common quality: They don’t take no for an answer in their persistent efforts to pry open government for all to see.

Their drive for accountability has prompted new law and landed some of them in legal trouble. Never deterred, they keep pressing, in several cases fighting for local Sunshine ordinances to reduce the roadblocks.

Sunshine Week, a national initiative to promote openness in government, runs from March 13-19 this year. It is headed by the American Society of News Editors, with major funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The Bee’s story is here. Details on Sunshine Week are here.

The city of Berkeley has adopted an ordinance that expands access to documents, expands live streaming of meetings and bars confidential legal settlements. But, according to the local Web site Berkeleyside, it also has potential to weaken support for a more far-reaching sunshine ordinance schedule for a public vote in November 2012.

The city ordinance, adopted Tuesday, would create an advisory commission that would seek voluntary agreements over open government disputes. By contrast, the much tougher city ballot measure would create a commission with power to sue city officials who violate the law.

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Californians Aware, an open government advocate, is challenging local governments in Orange County to make e-mails conducting official business available to the public. -db

Voice of OC
November 11, 2010
By Adam Elmahrek

Although email has firmly supplanted printed letters and memos as our most common form of written communication, it remains an elusive public record in Orange County.

A check into email retention policies across Orange County revealed wide inconsistencies. Some cities destroy emails after 30 days, some after 90 days. Some have no policy at all. Some direct their employees to save certain categories of emails and destroy the rest.

Most are violating the California Public Records Act, according to the First Amendment advocacy group Californians Aware.

As a result, transparency in city government is “to a great degree defeated entirely,” said CalAware general counsel Terry Francke, who is also Voice of OC’s open government consultant.

The Public Records Act calls for all government agencies in the state to keep emails related to city business for a minimum of two years, Francke and another CalAware attorney said. Exceptions to retention, the attorneys said, are rare but include personal messages like luncheon invitations or blast emails like “there are doughnuts in the break room.”

City attorneys and one organization that acts as a resource for local governments dispute CalAware’s reading of the law, saying the act does not require specific retention times.

And it is this reading of the law upon which many cities base their policies. Officials in Irvine, Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa routinely destroy unsaved city emails in as little as 30 days, while other cities, like Fullerton and Newport Beach, make an attempt to save emails identified as important correspondence but still destroy others.

Garden Grove leaves it up to the city employee who created the email to determine whether it is a public record and then print it out if he or she determines it is. Employees are directed to ask the city clerk if they are not sure whether the email is a public record.

Richard McKee, an attorney with CalAware, said that kind of policy isn’t nearly enough. “To think that individual employees are going to know enough about public records to make those kinds of judgments is ridiculous,” he said.

An Irvine City Council resolution passed in 2002 calls for emails in the system older than 30 days to be destroyed. It bases the policy on a section of the government code that allows a city to destroy a record when it is “no longer required.”

McKee called the resolution “clearly illegal.”

“Nothing in the CPRA [California Public Records Act] or Gov’t Code sect. 34090 allows the wholesale destruction of email records,” McKee wrote in an email.

City officials have defended their practice of destroying emails as legal and, in at least one case, argue there simply aren’t enough resources to identify and save emails considered public records.
Costa Mesa employees decide whether an email is important enough to save, and the city doesn’t have the resources to apply a more comprehensive retention policy, according to an official in the city’s information technology department.

Huntington Beach City Attorney Jennifer McGrath, whose city regularly destroys emails after they become more than 90 days old, says the city’s policy is in line with state law. McGrath acknowledged that emails are public records subject to the state’s public records law but said that the law governing retention of city records does not apply to emails.

“They [emails] are not records intended to be retained in the normal course of business for the city,” McGrath said. She added that the Public Records Act does not specify retention time.
JoAnne Speers, executive director of the Institute for Local Government, agrees with McGrath’s interpretation. The state’s records retention law and public records law allow for cities to make the call on how long emails should be retained, Speers said.

“The law gives local agencies the ability to determine what’s a public record that is of lasting importance to the conduct of the public agency’s business and that needs to be maintained,” Speers said.

McKee counters that McGrath’s interpretation of state law is wrong. He said email, as a medium, does not change the fact that as a written communication it is required to be kept as long as other public records.

“The two-year retention applies to all public records. I don’t know how she’s coming up with that interpretation,” McKee said.

The disagreement highlights a lack of clear direction on what to do with emails. There haven’t been any defining court cases on the matter, and the state has not issued a statewide standard.
“I lay the blame at the feet of the Attorney General’s Office,” McKee said. “I think the AG’s Office should really take the lead here and create a standard policy that they all should expect to conform to.”

McKee had a recent showdown with Lake Forest over its retention policy. The city was about to move into a policy of purging emails in Microsoft Outlook that are more than 90 days old.

He caught wind of the plan, and one of his attorneys, Kelly Aviles, sent a letter to the city attorney in September threatening a writ of mandate to stop destroying city emails. Since then, the city has indefinitely postponed its destruction policy and is working to provide city employees with public records training, according to city Public Information Officer Debra Rose.

“Our whole purpose of this is to make sure records are handled properly” Rose said.

McKee says he is still waiting for the city to send him a draft of an approach that will satisfy the law. He also said he hopes the experience with Lake Forest will be the starting point of, eventually, sweeping reform of local governments’ policies regarding emails.

“We thought this would be a good place to really come up with something to tout to other agencies as a reasonable approach,” McKee said.

Copyright 2010 Voice of OC | Orange County’s Nonprofit Investigative News Agency
FAC Content Use Policy

The Third District Court of Appeals ruled that under the state’s Public Records Act, the Inspector General did not have to release the details of an investigation of parole authorities who during Phillip Garrido’s parole did not discover details of the kidnapping of an 11-year-old girl. -db

Metropolitan News-Enterprise
October 27, 2010
By a MetNews Staff Writer

The watchdog agency for the state prison and parole system has absolute discretion as to whether or not to open its investigative files to the public, the Third District Court of Appeal has ruled.

The justices yesterday ordered publication of an Oct. 6 opinion by Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, whose bid for election as chief justice of California goes before the voters Tuesday.

The court held that the Office of the Inspector General is not required by the California Public Records Act to disclose anything in its files, and that a Sacramento Superior Court judge had no authority to order that some files be produced for in camera inspection.

The San Francisco Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee and KCRA-TV sought to review the files in connection with their coverage of Phillip Garrido, the parolee accused, along with his wife, of kidnapping an 11-year-old girl in 1991, holding her prisoner for 18 years, and fathering her two children. The OIG issued a public report faulting parole authorities for failing to uncover the kidnapping in the years that Garrido was subject to their supervision, but refused to release its investigative files.

Jaycee Lee Dugard was kidnapped on June 10, 1991, when she was 11 years old. Dugard was abducted from a school bus stop within sight of her home in South Lake Tahoe.

Observations of unusual behavior on the part of the Garridos sparked an investigation that led to the positive identification of Dugard, living in a tent behind Garrido’s home.

The OIG concluded that opportunities to discover that Garrido had kidnapped Dugard were lost because of negligence in the training and performance of police agents.

Cantil-Sakauye, writing for the Court of Appeal, said Penal Code Sec. 6131, which holds that reports by the OIG to the governor and the head of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation “shall be held as confidential and disclosed in confidence,” exempts all of the underlying investigative reports from forced disclosure under the CPRA.

The justice also agreed with the OIG that its investigative files are exempt under Government Code Sec. 6254(f), the CPRA provision exempting “investigatory or security files compiled by any…state or local police agency.” Nothing in the OIG statute overrides that broad exemption, Cantil-Sakauye concluded.

The case is Office of the Inspector General v. Superior Court (Sacramento Bee), C064178.

Copyright 2010 Metropolitan News Company       FAC Content Use Policy

A Santa Clarita group opposed to the takeover of three libraries now under the Los Angeles County system has asked a court to order the release of all documents related to the takeover. -db

Santa Clarita Valley Signal
October 14, 2010
By Natalie Everett

A newly formed nonprofit aiming to keep Santa Clarita’s three libraries managed by the Los Angeles County library system is now asking for the court to order the release of any documents related to the city’s takeover, according to an updated complaint filed Tuesday.

Save Our Library filed a lawsuit against the city earlier this month seeking to stop the city’s impending takeover of the three local libraries and keep the city from sharing private library-patron information with a library-management company.

The new addition, in an update to their previous complaint filed with the North Valley District of the California Supreme Court on Tuesday, demands documents that Santa Clarita officials had refused to turn over, citing attorney-client privilege and other reasons.

The Santa Clarita City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to have City Attorney Carl Newton’s law firm, Burke, Williams & Sorensen, defend the lawsuit.

The Santa Clarita City Council voted Aug. 24 to withdraw from the county library system and create a city division to run the three libraries. The City Council also voted to enter into a $19-million, 5-year contract with the private library-management firm Library Systems & Services LLC to operate the system.

The moves — taken in a 4-1 vote, with Councilman Bob Kellar against — caught residents who said they are generally happy with the county libraries by surprise.

The first the public heard of the city staff’s proposal to withdraw from the Los Angeles County Library System was July 13. That’s when Councilwoman Laurie Ender, speaking as a member of the Library Ad-Hoc Committee, requested City Council consideration for a withdrawal from the county system at its next City Council meeting.

The City Council voted Aug. 24 after three hours of public testimony, most of it opposing the move until more questions are answered.

Save Our Library members attempted to answer those questions in a public records request under the state’s Brown Act, according to the complaint filed by the group’s leader, attorney Don Ricketts. Save Our Library asked for any documents related to the takeover of the library, including all studies, proposals, correspondence or bids.

The city responded by saying all records could be inspected, except those falling under exceptions in the state open-records law, such as documents that contain privileged attorney-client information or information that is in preliminary-draft form.

Ricketts’ lawsuit says the city’s response “fails to give any indication of the nature of the records, which it is withholding, and fails to present adequate justification for withholding the records.”

The city has 30 days to respond to the lawsuit, Newton said.

Newton said he couldn’t yet say what form the response might take, but he noted that an injunction is not possible.

The city is also working on a response to a letter from library patrons and workers filed Sept. 28, which requested the city take back its library-takeover vote and hold three public hearings on the matter.

The letter-writers allege the city violated the Brown Act by discussing and making a decision to take over the libraries in closed-session meetings. The Library Ad-Hoc Committee was originally formed to discuss ways to pay for the new Newhall Library.

Copyright 2010 The Signal     FAC Content Use Policy

Putting privacy and fundraising over transparency, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed transparency for the donation records of auxiliaries of the University of California and California State University. -db

Central California Business Times
September 30, 2010

SACRAMENTO –– A bill that would require the various foundations and other types of auxiliaries that are closely associated with California State University and the University of California to open their donation records to the public has been scuttled by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The University of California and California State University claimed Senate Bill 330 would result in a “chilling effect” on private donations.

“For a governor who wanted to blow up the boxes and whose rhetoric is filled with platitudes of open government, it is a disgrace and completely hypocritical to then veto legislation to bring real transparency and accountability to our public universities,” says the bill’s author, state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco.

“The governor, like his ivory tower counterparts within the UC and CSU administrations, failed California taxpayers and students by vetoing this sunshine legislation. He has secured his legacy as governor – a failure when it came to open government,” he says.

“While the bill attempts to provide a veil of protection for donors requesting anonymity, as crafted, it will not provide sufficient protection for many who rightfully deserve a level of privacy as part of their giving,” Mr. Schwarzenegger says in his veto message Thursday night. “Often times, these generous private citizen donors do not want to be in the glare of publicity.”

The bill would have placed the institutions’ subsidiary organizations – known as “auxiliaries” – under the scope of the California Public Records Act. Under existing law that now will remain unchanged, the state’s public colleges and universities are able to hide billions of dollars within their auxiliary organizations and foundations, which are often staffed by public employees, Mr. Yee had argued.

This secrecy has encouraged colleges and universities to create an increasing number of auxiliaries to run campus operations such as food services, parking facilities, housing and bookstores – all of which would be subject to public oversight if they were administered by the agency and not an auxiliary, he said.

Copyright 2010 Central Valley Business Times     FAC  Content Use Policy

A Los Angeles County lawyer said they are delaying the release of the names and salaries of its highest paid employees out of concern for the workers’ safety. -db

Los Angeles Times
September 27, 2010
By Rong-Gong Lin II

Los Angeles County officials are taking steps to keep secret the names and salaries of some highly paid county employees, saying they need more time to comply with public records law to protect workers who claim that disclosure could put them at risk.

The response came after The Times asked for the identities and pay of county workers who earn $250,000 or more annually, a request made in the wake of the salary scandal in Bell, where eight current and former city officials face corruption charges of misappropriation of public funds.

Nancy Takade, the county’s principal deputy county counsel, told The Times last week that the county needed additional time because many employees “have expressed personal safety and similar concerns about such disclosure.”

“As some of these concerns are potentially legitimate, especially those relating to personal safety, the county developed a process by which employees may request anonymity for personal safety and other legitimate reasons,” Takade wrote. She added that the requested data, “with appropriate redaction as to employees requiring anonymity,” would probably be ready in early October.

County officials are surveying all 100,000 county employees. The Times’ request for information covers no more than a few hundred.

A broad refusal to release employee salary information would be in “total violation” of a 2007 California Supreme Court ruling, said Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn.

He said the ruling was “pretty emphatic in determining that public employees, with very few exceptions, don’t have a reasonable expectation to privacy in their salary or compensation information.”

The ruling involved a case in which Contra Costa Times reporters sought the names, job titles and salaries of all Oakland city employees who earned $100,000 or more for the 2003-04 fiscal year. Oakland refused to identify employees, even though it had done so in the past.

“Openness in government is essential to the functioning of democracy,” Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote in a majority opinion, signed by three other justices. Three other justices wrote opinions that concurred with portions of the majority ruling and dissented from others.

“We recognize that many individuals, including public employees, may be uncomfortable with the prospect of others knowing their salary,” the ruling said. “Nonetheless, in light of the strong public policy supporting transparency in government, an individual’s expectation of privacy in a salary earned in public employment is significantly less than the privacy expectation regarding income earned in the private sector.”

Government agencies, both California and federal, have a long history of making clear that the public has a right to know the salaries and names of government workers. Even before the California Public Records Act was signed into law in 1968, the California attorney general’s office in 1955 wrote that “the name of every public officer and employee, as well as the amount of his salary, is a matter of public record.”

Takade, of the county counsel’s office, said in an e-mail that she believed that the 2007 opinion of the Supreme Court “does not preclude the county from redacting an employee’s identity and workplace if such disclosure would threaten the employee’s personal safety.”

Takade cited an example in which disclosure of a worker’s name could allow an ex-spouse stalker to “easily discover the whereabouts of that employee.”

The Supreme Court ruling acknowledged one narrow possibility in which it would be in the public interest to keep a public employee’s salary confidential — the case of an undercover police officer. But the justices concluded in the 2007 case that Oakland and the unions failed to provide specific evidence on why particular individuals’ salary should be kept confidential.

Furthermore, the ruling stated that police officers in general do not have a blanket right to keep their salaries secret.

“Counterbalancing any cognizable interest that public employees may have in avoiding disclosure of their salaries is the strong public interest in knowing how the government spends its money,” the ruling said.

“Public access makes it possible for members of the public ‘to expose corruption, incompetence, inefficiency, prejudice, and favoritism,’ ” the ruling said, quoting from an earlier court opinion.

The ruling cited numerous published articles in which disclosing salaries served a “significant public interest.” One example was how state employees were being reclassified as “safety workers” to get higher pension benefits. Another was how a University of California executive won a pay raise even as the university ordered tuition increases and worker layoffs.

Ewert, of the newspapers association, said the recent revelations of highly paid officials in Bell, a story uncovered by The Times, shows the importance of disclosing taxpayer-funded salaries.

“Public pay is the public’s business,” Ewert said. “Without the ability of the public to learn how much public employees are making, there is absolutely no way that they can oversee what government officials are doing on their behalf.”

“The California Supreme Court has already decided this issue,” said Karl Olson, a media attorney who argued for the Contra Costa Times in the 2007 Supreme Court case. “For L.A. County to be taking this position is rather surprising and seems to reflect almost a willful ignorance of the law.”

Copyright 2010 Los Angeles Times     FAC Content Use Policy

Two Los Angeles Times reporters knew they were on to something when the Bell, California city clerk told them they would have to wait ten days to receive records that should be produced immediately. They threatened to invoke the California Public Records Act to obtain the records that showed city officials were giving themselves outlandish six-figure salaries. -db

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
September 28, 2010
By Daniel Skallman

Eight Bell, Calif., city officials were arrested last week on corruption charges after public records requests and a subsequent investigation by the Los Angeles Times revealed government corruption and prompted a larger investigation by the Los Angeles County district attorney.

Times reporters Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives began their investigation in June while working on a story about the city of Maywood, Calif., which had recently laid off nearly all city employees and contracted the positions out to the nearby town of Bell, according to Gottlieb. The day after their story was published, the reporters learned that the district attorney was investigating several Bell city council members who were earning nearly $100,000 each in annual salaries, Gottlieb said.

After learning of the DA’s probe, Vives and Gottlieb went to Bell to file a request under the California Public Records Act to view city council minutes, expenses and employment contracts. These documents are typically easy to obtain, Gottlieb said. However, the city clerk did not immediately release the documents, telling the reporters they would have to wait 10 days, the maximum time a government agency has to produce a public record in California.

When told he would have to wait for the records, “my jaw sort of dropped,” Gottlieb said. “It made no sense for them to wait that long. They should just be able to hand us a folder with the minutes in it.”

After filing the request, Gottlieb made daily phone calls to the Bell city clerk and was repeatedly told that the documents weren’t ready, he said. The reporters then demanded the release of the documents, threatening to sue the city.

“I told the clerk, ‘Look, we don’t want to sue you, but we will, and when we win — and we will — we’ll ask the judge to make you guys pay our legal fees, because that’s what’s in the law,’” Gottlieb said.

Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo finally agreed to release the documents at an offsite meeting in a city park, Gottlieb said. When Gottlieb asked Rizzo how much he earned annually, Rizzo reported his salary to be $700,000, less than half his actual compensation, according to Gottlieb.

Three Bell city officials, including Rizzo, resigned later in the summer after the Times broke the news about their salaries, according to National Public Radio. Gottlieb said that the reporters’ use of the public records act was essential to exposing the city government’s corruption and spurring the DA’s further investigation.

“It was crucial because it gave us access to the records. They couldn’t lie to us,” he said, adding that he and Vives have filed several more public records requests as they continue to investigate and report stories about the Bell city council.

“It has continued to be crucial, as much of our reporting has continued to be based on documents obtained through the public records act,” he said.

Although the Times was the first to break the story about the corruption in Bell, city council members had long been suspected of corruption by those living in the town, according to NPR. Bell citizens were prevented from uncovering the salary discrepancies earlier because Rizzo falsified documents detailing his salary before releasing them to the public, Gottlieb explained. He also said that ordinary citizens typically don’t have the resources to bring a lawsuit against a city council.

“If a local citizen wanted to sue, he’d probably have to pay all the costs out of pocket,” he said. Rather, it took the financial and investigative resources of the Times to obtain the documents needed to prove the corruption.

“We’re a big organization. We have attorneys at our disposal, and we’ll use them,” Gottlieb said.

The eight arrested Bell city council members are currently awaiting trial and California Attorney General Jerry Brown has sued to recover excess money the officials had been paid in annual salaries, Gottlieb said. He also indicated that the district attorney could eventually bring forth additional charges as the investigation continues.

Copyright 2010 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press    FAC Content Use Policy

The watchdog columnist for the San Jose Mercury News says that the new sunshine ordinance that will go before the voters at a yet-to-be-determined time will improve open government. Alameda is also considering a new ordinance much needed in a city where a well-compensated fire chief was filling up his personal car at city gas pumps. -db

San Jose Mercury News
Commentary
September 26, 2010
By Thomas Peele

After nearly a decade of debate, a sunshine ordinance calling for more government transparency is moving forward in Berkeley. One is also under consideration in the city of Alameda.

The state’s Public Records Act and its open meeting law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, are the minimum transparency requirements a government must employ. Nothing stops a county, a city, a water district or any government entity from passing local rules that improve upon them.

And there is no question that improvements to access are needed everywhere.

Advocates in Berkeley have gathered enough signatures to qualify a Sunshine Ordinance for the ballot, a step that comes after years of discussion. It is unclear when it might go to voters. A City Council work session is scheduled Tuesday on the proposal.

Whenever the proposal goes to voters, there is no question they should vote yes.

In a city where council meetings sometimes drag on until dawn, tighter controls are needed.

The proposal would set an 11 p.m. meeting curfew and increase the number of days an agenda must be made public before a meeting from four to 12. That’s a big step to slow down the ramming through of proposals and increase public awareness.

The Berkeley proposal would also take very progressive steps to make routine government records public. Top officials would be required to keep their appointment calendars online and update them weekly.

Imagine that, access to the day-to-day schedules of the people who work for you and whose salaries you pay.

The best sign for the need of the Berkeley proposal is that the city’s bureaucrats are against it.

“… (T)he redirection of staff resources away from current functions in order to meet new obligations imposed by this proposed ordinance could significantly affect the level of service the city is able to provide “…,” a staff report on the proposal says.

That report also claims the ordinance would cost the city $2 million in “ongoing annual costs.” Proponents of the measure dispute that number.

Berkeley pays a lot in salaries to people who endorse the status quo. Records show more than a third of all city employees were paid in excess of $90,000 last year. That’s just salary, it doesn’t include benefits.

It should go without saying that an understanding of transparency is inherent in such high-paying government work. But it isn’t. Could the city fund any costs of the sunshine ordinance by cutting salaries?

Alameda is a far different place than Berkeley, but it, too, would benefit greatly by increased transparency.

Any time I have requested records from Alameda the experience has left doubts about the city administration’s commitment to transparency. Pay data comes slowly and grudgingly. A public records request by the Bay Area News Group earlier this year for parking ticket data was met with recalcitrance.

Alamedans have legitimate concerns about how their local government spends their money — highlighted by the recent suspension of Fire Chief David Kapler. He is being investigated after someone snapped a photo of him gassing up his personal car, a BMW coupe, at the city pumps.

Records show he filled up the car on the taxpayer’s tab seven times in June alone.

The city paid Kapler $201,960 last year. His actions prompts the question: For that kind of money he can’t afford to buy his own gas? Add to the equation that the city already provides him with an official vehicle.

Kapler claimed his contract gave him free gas for his personal car. What it does give him is a monthly vehicle stipend of $250. He also claimed he had verbal approval from a former city manager to take free gas. That such an agreement — if it existed at all — wasn’t in writing is troubling.

Would a sunshine ordinance have stopped Kapler from taking the gas? No. But it might have stopped him sooner.

Suppose the city was required to post more routine records on its website? Suppose those records included gas logs? Then someone outside the city bureaucracy might have seen that the logs showed how often Kapler filled up his little blue car.

There’s no reason why Alameda’s proposed sunshine ordinance couldn’t require it.

It could even require that the city post a video camera overlooking the gas pumps and post a permanent web link to it. You know, so everybody can keep an eye on things.

Copyright 2010 San Jose Mercury News     FAC Content Use Policy

When a reporter tried to get e-mails of three trustees of the Peralta Community College District running for re-election or in one case for mayor, two of the trustees reacted by expressing their feelings that racist or right-wing motives fueled the e-mail requests. -db

Contra Costa Times
Commentary
September 15, 2010
By Katy Murphy

Matt Krupnick, my colleague who covers higher education for the Bay Area News Group, requested e-mail correspondence from the public accounts of Linda Handy, Marcie Hodge and William Riley, trustees for the Peralta Community College District who are running for re-election or, in Hodge’s case, for mayor. He tells us what he found.

A stack of e-mails I obtained from the Peralta Community College District gives an interesting look into the inner world of trustees — and some shed light on why they never return my calls.

The e-mails, obtained through the California Public Records Act, were sent to and from the public accounts of trustees Linda Handy, Marcie Hodge and William Riley, all of whom are running for re-election or for another public office in November. Most of the messages provided nothing but tedium, but others contained some surprising reactions to what I thought were standard requests for information.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Handy responded in one message when told of my request for the e-mails. “How racist is
that?”

All three of the trustees, who all happen to be African-American, are running for public office — Handy and Riley for re-election and Hodge for Oakland mayor — and none of the three has been willing to answer questions about their performance on the Peralta board. Looking through their e-mail is one of the few ways for a reporter to tell the public about these officials.

The messages show surprising reactions from other trustees as well. Also in response to my records request, Trustee Cy Gulassa wondered who owns the Bay Area News Group, for which I write, guessing that politics were behind our investigation into former Chancellor Elihu Harris.

“Given its irrational pursuit of Elihu, does it have a right-wing objective?” Gulassa asked in a message to Riley and Trustee Abel Guillen. “Can we explore this?”

I know nothing about this company’s owners or their politics, and I and my colleague, Thomas Peele, pursued stories about Harris because we were concerned about the use of public money and how the Peralta district operates. After our reporting, the board opted not to renew Harris’ contract and is now engaged in a search for a new chancellor.

The e-mails do explain why it’s so hard for me to reach an elected official in the district. On July 7, the day the Alameda County grand jury released a report criticizing Peralta leadership, a college-district employee, Roxanne Epstein, advised trustees I would be calling them for comments. Epstein, who made a little more than $100,000 last year as the chancellor’s assistant and the board clerk, also gave trustees some advice.

“Please consider ‘do not answer’ for his number,” Epstein wrote, referring to my queries. Sure enough, none of the trustees answered my calls.

Other messages showed evidence of rocky relations between trustees, as well as possible violations of the state’s open-meetings law. In an e-mail to three other trustees — the Brown Act forbids such communication between a majority of an elected board — Trustee Bill Withrow took exception at his colleagues’ decision to distance themselves from a consultant.

“What the hell is your problem!!!!!” Withrow wrote to board president Abel Guillen. “If you want to rumble…bring it on.”

In an attempt to mollify Withrow, Guillen responded that the consulting firm, the Pineapple Group, had close ties to Harris.

“We can deal with this issue once Elihu is long gone,” Guillen wrote. “We can’t afford perceptions of impropriety.”

Copyright 2010 MediaNews Group     FAC Content Use Policy

The Chula Vista Elementary school board says that their gatherings before board meetings in the superintendent’s office to eat take-out food and to ask one-on-one questions of the staff are open to the public and not in violation of California’s Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law. -db

San Diego Union-Tribune
September 2, 2010
By Ashly McGlone

Chula Vista Elementary school board members have been gathering in the superintendent’s office before their public meetings, asking questions about agenda items and eating restaurant take-out food paid for by taxpayers.

State law generally requires elected officials to post public notices so citizens can attend when public business is discussed with three or more board members. But district officials say the pre-meeting sessions are not subject to those requirements.

The practice raises the possibility that a consensus could be reached in private, depriving the public of the right to know what went into board decisions.

The Watchdog reviewed minutes of all board meetings from December 2008 to the present. Of 130 motions, 129 passed unanimously. The one split vote, in February, concerned the order of agenda items.

Records obtained by The Watchdog under the California Public Records Act reveal $2,035 in meals have been billed to the district’s general fund since December 2008.

According to board vice president Larry Cunningham, food is “always there. If we have a board meeting, it’s there.” He said the meals have been standard practice since he joined the school board more than 16 years ago and no one has ever raised a concern.

The informal gatherings give board members a chance to grab a bite to eat and get their questions answered by staff members, Cunningham said.

“If you have a question to ask staff, you have a chance to go ask staff about that. It is nothing. We don’t meet with closed doors. The doors are always open,” Cunningham said. “We find it is easier to do that than ask a lot of questions at board meetings. We feel the board meetings are there for input for the public.”

Max Batangan, assistant to the school board and the superintendent, distributes meeting agendas and notifies members of any changes, according to the superintendent and board members.

Superintendent Lowell Billings, who is set to retire in December after nine years as superintendent, said, “It is a staging for the main board meeting which is held in open session. Meaning, you gotta have a place to show up, and I hold it in my office, so I am the gatekeeper.”

Generally, board members said the meeting allows them to ask one-on-one questions of staff members for clarification.

“I read the packet myself. The protocol is to take any questions to the superintendent or other district staff for more verification or information,” board member Douglas Luffborough said.

The idea of one-on-one questions may be a key distinction, experts said, as any group discussion of issues in the pre-meeting would be forbidden under the state’s open-meetings law, known as the Ralph M. Brown Act.

Dan Hentschke, a former Oceanside, San Marcos and Solana Beach city attorney and current general counsel for the San Diego County Water Authority, conducts trainings for elected officials on open-meetings law. Briefings on changes to the night’s agenda could be an issue, he said.

“Updating collectively, that’s a problem,” Hentschke said. “If they are hearing collectively information, that should be held in an open meeting.”

“These kinds of meetings are ones that we use as an example of ones that can be very problematic,” Hentschke said. “The law is very clear that gatherings of a majority of a legislative body have to be open-noticed and public if there is any discussion among the board members of public business. Gatherings of this nature can be held in compliance, but it is very difficult because they cannot talk about matters of agency business.”

Attorney Michael Jenkins, chair of Brown Act Committee for the League of California Cities, also said that a notification of agenda changes would be considered school business.

“Under the Brown Act they are not allowed to hear, discuss or deliberate on any matter of district business. That’s a problem because that’s business that pertains to the school district. It’s just not a good idea to have them all together,” he said. “I can’t say if their particular practice is a violation. I will say it could be under certain circumstances that they need to avoid.”

Theresa Acerro, president of the Southwest Chula Vista Civic Association and a retired teacher, said, “I would be really concerned about that. I think those questions should be asked in a public meeting because it is likely that members of the public would have those same questions.”

Former district board member and retired economics professor Peter Watry, 79, also expressed concern over the board dinners. Watry — who said the meals were not present when he served on the board from 1976 to 1980 — currently serves as vice president and acting president of the nonprofit Crossroads II, aimed primarily at monitoring land use decisions by the Chula Vista City Council.

“If they are following the Brown Act, they shouldn’t be doing it,” said Watry. “Even that one-on-one gets tricky. If you talk to a third person, you violate the Brown Act. My guess is they are just not paying attention to the strictness of the rules, but they should not be doing it.”

A favorite meal for the board sessions was the $110 large kabob pack from Daphne’s Greek Cafe. Other meals came from China China restaurant and Pat & Oscar’s. Some food was also prepared by the district’s Child Nutrition Services.

The spending on meals comes despite the financial issues facing most school districts in the state.

At Chula Vista, managers are taking seven furlough days this academic year and next, while classified staff will take two to six furlough days and teachers will take 5.5 furlough days, two of which are class days shortening the school year. No furloughs were in place last year.

Also, this year is the first year the district’s 20:1 class size cap has been removed. Average class sizes this year are 19.9 children for kindergarten through third grade, and 28.9 children for fourth through sixth grade. Last year’s average was about 18 students.

Billings said the food is for board members and other district staff but members of the public could come to the pre-meetings.

“Anybody can walk in and see them and I am there to be the sergeant of arms of board members,” Billings said.

But Acerro countered, “That’s no public meeting, and besides they have to have publicly notice meetings, and if it’s not a meeting, they shouldn’t be all together discussing school business,” she said.

Billings contends there is no Brown Act violation.

“Everybody in the work knows that these meetings take place. They are really not meetings, but a gathering place,” Billings said. “If a board really wanted to violate the Brown Act, they would be more secretive or subversive or meet in a covert matter.”

Copyright 2007 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.    FAC Content Use Policy

While ruling that  an Ontario police department armed with a legitimate purpose had the right to inspect an officer’s text messages, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the pubic’s right to know under the California Public Records Act. The Court said that police officers should realize their writings may be subject to public viewing. -db

A Catholic high school refuses to release the details of a football coach’s punishment for a recruiting violation claiming  the school is private and not subject to the California Public Records Act. -db

An Orange County Superior Court judge ruled in a lawsuit brought by the Sierra Club  that the California Public Records Act (CPRA)  did not require the county to provide its Landbase parcel map system at little or no cost. In a ruling last year a state appeals court ruled in a First Amendment Coalition lawsuit that Santa Clara County had to release its parcel map system under the CPRA. -db

Californians Aware is suing Cal State Stanislaus over their failure to provide documents about the fee they are paying Sarah Palin to speak at a June 25 fundraiser. They claim that the public’s right to know outweighs privacy concerns. -db

Csu’s investigation

And on Wednesday, Shirvani announced his own investigation into how the students had obtained the Palin papers. He said they were an unsigned draft that disclosed no fee but did specify a luxury hotel and two first-class plane tickets for her.

By contrast, neither Bill Clinton, Al Gore nor Bill Gates took a fee or reimbursement for speaking at UC Berkeley in the last year.

A Chronicle survey of California public campuses suggests that commencement speakers typically receive expenses but no fee.

Professor David Levine of UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, an expert in civil procedure, said the plaintiffs “have a very good chance of getting all or most of these documents” because university officials are so involved in the foundation.

Shirvani declined to answer questions about the suit, citing pending litigation. But he said the foundation will disclose net costs and revenue after the Palin event.

Copyright 2010 Hearst Communications Inc.

Students from California State University Stanislaus have discovered shredded documents in the garbage concerning an upcoming speaking engagement by Sarah Palin. The university had denied that any documents existed on the Palin visit. -db

A California state senator trying to get the California State University Stanislaus to disclose the fee it will pay Sarah Palin for speaking at a campus event in June claims that he can prove the school withheld information about the event that should be public. -db

At the request of open government crusader Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo), the Senate Rules Committee established a Select Committee on the California Public Records law and the Brown Act. The committee will work to improve transparency in the state. -db

Senator Leland Yee
Press Release
March 25, 2010

SACRAMENTO – The Senate Rules Committee has approved a request by Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco/San Mateo) to establish a Select Committee on California’s Public Records and Open Meeting Laws, of which Yee will chair.

“I am looking forward to chairing this select committee and ensuring that state and local government agencies adhere and embrace our transparency laws,” said Yee. “This committee will examine ways to increase public access to government documents and proceedings, and will protect tax dollars by fostering greater accountability of scarce public resources.”

“While California may have some of the best open government laws, we do not have the best rates of compliance by public agencies,” said Yee. “It is disheartening to see so many cases in which members of the public or media outlets are denied government records, especially at a time when it is so critical that tax dollars are spent wisely.”

What others are saying:

“With this action right on the heels of Sunshine Week, the Legislature could not give better recognition to the reality that governmental transparency has now become a concern worthy of the continuing study and review of policy-makers at the highest level. From our perspective, the number one issue is the fact that the open meeting and public information laws can be enforced only by suing the government, which can resist in court for months or years using taxpayer funds to fight taxpayers.” – Terry Francke, General Counsel for Californians Aware

“This is historic in the sense that Senator Yee will chair a committee that will chart the course to ensure that all Californians will have confidence in their government through greater transparency.” – Willie Pelote, Assistant Director of Political Action for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)

“The establishment of the Select Committee on California’s Public Records and Open Meeting Law is a crucial and necessary step toward rebuilding the public’s trust in our state institutions. The public should not have to sue to obtain public records from state agencies. For too long, the University of California has denied basic information related to its finances. The Committee needs to examine, more closely, UC’s practice of denying the public information.” – Lakesha Harrison, President of AFSCME Local 3299

“This is great news. There are dozens of issues the committee should explore, but perhaps none more important than the continuing barriers the public faces when it attempts to access electronically held public records and electronic communications of public officials.” – Tom Newton, General Counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association

“As an organization who has witnessed several violations of our state’s open government laws, we applaud the establishment of this select committee and look forward to working with Senator Yee to help bring greater transparency to the University of California and other public agencies.” – Geri Jenkins, Co-President of the California Nurses Association

Local and state governmental agencies blame budget cuts for their inability to provide information to the media requested under state open records laws. -db

The Sacramento Bee
March 15, 2010
By Charles Piller

BY PETER SCHEER—As California voters begin the process of selecting the next  Governor of the ungovernable Golden State, the leading candidates owe them a demonstration of their commitment to government transparency.

All politicians are supportive of open-government “in principle;”  the question is whether they are committed in practice. The best test for that is a candidate’s willingness, before an election, to  disclose information about himself that is not legally required to be disclosed–but that voters nonetheless want, with good reason, to see. 

For Republican candidate Meg Whitman, the test will be whether she decides to release her tax returns. For Attorney General Jerry Brown, presumptive democratic  nominee, the test will be whether he opens wide the door to the records of his previous governorships.

Whitman thus far has resisted journalists’ requests for a copy of her tax returns. She is, of course,  within her rights, legally, in doing so. But in 2010 that is not a right on which a candidate can stand and still expect to be competitive in an election for high office.

Voters’ interest in a candidate’s  tax returns is not just voyeuristic. In the case of a wealthy candidate like Whitman, the former CEO of eBay, tax returns can be a window on her character, showing, for example: whether she is generous with charitable contributions and who benefits from her giving (her alma mater? people in need?); whether she has been aggressive in the use of tax shelters to avoid tax; and how her tax rate compares with the rates that most voters pay.

These  data points are both revealing  and a matter of legitimate interest to voters. Disclosing tax returns is part of California’s political culture for governors. Schwarzenegger has released his taxes. So did Gray Davis and Whitman’s fellow eBay millionare, Steve Westly. If Whitman’s tax returns contain information that is embarrassing, all the more reason to release them now, before public attention focuses on the governor’s race. An embarrassing tax return can even be spun positively—for example, as proof that Whitman is a true outsider who never planned to enter politics.

But disclose the returns she must.

As candidate for Governor, Jerry Brown has left a long paper trail. Not just his years as AG or as mayor of Oakland, but also his two terms as Governor from 1975 to 1983. But don’t go looking for the records of his governorship, which are stashed in an archive at University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Under an obscure provision of the Public Records Act (Gov Code section 6268), governors, once they leave office, have the option of locking away their gubernatorial records for a “period of 50 years or the death of the Governor, whichever is later.” 

Jerry Brown has exercised this option, which means that all the public records of his governorship–including the anti-tax groundswell that resulted in Prop 13, Brown’s opposition to the death penalty, his battles with California’s  oil companies over tax and environmental issues, and much more–are exempt from the Public Records Act.

Put aside for a moment the absurdity of California’s 50-year secrecy rule (the records of US presidents, by contrast, are closed off for only 12 years). Brown’s pledge of government transparency can’t be taken seriously as long as he continues to invoke the Public Records Act’s exemption for his gubernatorial records–records which were public while he was governor, which were  paid for by taxpayers, and which are now more than 27 years old.

In fairness to Brown, he is willing to pry open the door to these documents on a case-by-case basis. In response to the First Amendment Coalition’s record request, Brown, through his lawyer, offered to “waive the fifty-year access restriction . . . as to” the organization’s executive director, and he has done the same for several reporters. But the point is that no government official should get to pick and choose who can see public records. Selective access to information and freedom-of-information are mutually exclusive.

The test for Brown is whether, in advance of the election, he will waive–for the public generally–the 50-year exemption for his gubernatorial records, giving access to all (subject, of course, to the exceptions in the law that apply to any public records). Brown can do this with a stroke of the pen, just as he invoked the exemption in the first place. 

If he refuses, voters will not only have reason to doubt Brown’s open-government credentials. They will wonder if there’s something in the archive that he is trying to hide.
——
Peter Scheer is executive director of the First Amendment Coalition

Records requested under the California Public Records Act show that the five supervisors plus the county administrative officer are running up excessive expense accounts and indicated that the supervisors may have violated California’s open meeting law, the Brown Act, by dining often with a voting majority. -db

San Jose is proposing a disclosure policy to make sure its public officials do not use such devices as iPhones and BlackBerrys to skirt open government laws. -DB

Senator Leland Yee of San Francisco has asked the administration of Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo to keep wealthy donors from influencing curriculum. The request came after the Harris Ranch Beef Company threatened to withhold a half million dollar contribution unless the university scuttled a certain guest lecture. -DB

With almost 90 percent of California state publications online with no print counterpart, it is clear that any of these records are disappearing regularly, and there is no legal requirement for the executive branch of state government to preserve the information. -DB

Under California law, government agencies have ten days to fulfill public information requests, but as of last week, in response to a citizen’s inquiry, the Glendale Unified School District has not supplied full records of employees who make more than $100,000. -DB

Many California county health officials are discounting arguments that it is in the public interest to know who died from swine flu and refusing to release the records to journalism students from University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism. In denying the requests, officials cite privacy issues and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a federal law to keep patients’ health records confidential. -DB