2007 California Open Government Legislative Roundup: Successes and Failures

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Nick Rahaim
Executive Assistant
California First Amendment Coalition

The 2007 legislative session started with a host of promising bills that would have created more transparency and would have reversed recent judicial and Attorney General opinions permitting excessive secrecy. There were some successes and some disappointments. The major disappointment was the failure to overturn the 2006 state Supreme Court decision in Copley Press v. Superior Court, which effectively sealed all police disciplinary records. The major success was legislation creating more oversight and accountability for the UC Regents’ and CSU Trustees’ executive pay committees.

Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and Senator Gloria Romero (D-Santa Monica) introduced AB 1393 and SB 1019, respectively. These bills attempted to overturn the Copley Press decision that closed police disciplinary records to the pubic. With the police union’s full political weight against the bills, they never emerged from committee. The battle is not over, however. Both bills are likely to be considered again in the next legislative session.

Leland Yee (D-San Mateo) ushered SB 190, the Higher Education Governance Accountability Act, to Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk where it was signed into law on October 12. The bill applies to committees and sub-committees of the UC Regents and the CSU Trustees that decide on compensation of high-level university officials. The bill requires full disclosure of all salary proposals and allows for public comment before bringing a proposal to a final vote. In 2006 Yee authored a similar bill (AB 775), which was killed in the Senate Appropriations Committee by Don Perata (D-Oakland). Interestingly, Perata coauthored SB 190.

Another open government success was SB 690 by Senator Ron Calderon (D-Montebello). SB 690 allows district attorneys and local prosecutors to release police blotters and defendants’ “rap sheet” histories upon written request to those who will attest, under penalty of perjury, that the information will be used for a journalistic or scholarly purpose. The law overrides an opinion by former Attorney General Bill Lockyer, which had pulled blotters and rap sheets from the public record.