Governor's Sunshine Moves 'Too Little, Too Late'

OPEN GOVERNMENT -- "Forgive me for not running to the newsroom parapets with a trumpet when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger finally decided to join the 21st century earlier this month and order the posting of government contracts and audits online," writes Thomas Peele in the Contra Costa Times.

Imagine that, California government transparency on the Internet. Who'd have thought?

Actually, a lot of people have. Like every member of the Legislature, every open government advocate and just about anyone with a computer and a smidgen of common sense.

So here's the governor, with barely 18 months to go in office and presiding over a fiscal apocalypse, he finally follows through on campaign promises to shine a light into California's dark fiscal corners.

None of what Schwarzenegger did by issuing executive order S-08-09 earlier this month is a new idea. In fact, he's twice vetoed bills that would have done more for online transparency. Now, when California's coffers looking as if John Dillinger just paid them a visit, he does a little two-step?

In the past, Schwarzenegger has been nearly Pollyannaish about access. He vetoed reform legislation in 2006 claiming that access wasn't a problem because he issued an order telling his bureaucrats to be sure to comply with the Public Records Act.

If he expected people to believe that, he might as well have stood on the Golden Gate Bridge telling tourists he had its deed in his pocket and was taking bids on it.

He claimed that releasing his appointment calendar after passage of Prop. 59 in 2004 was a sign that he understood transparency. But what the governor did, in reality, was gut any chance that advocates had of establishing a clear judicial interpretation of the meaning of Prop. 59.

Sure, Schwarzenegger did the right thing by releasing his calendar, but his decision bound no one else. He didn't even declare that it was the policy of his administration that the calendars of all officials in state government were to be released.

Among the ideas the governor rejected was creating an office of open government, which could have turned Prop. 59 into a hammer to pound away at openness issues. The legal meaning of Prop. 59, which amended the state constitution to require that the government always take the broadest possible interpretation of disclosure, remains untested and largely ignored.