CalAware Today

Local Whistleblower Programs Faulted as Failures

In San Francisco, no data exist on whether the city controller's whistleblower protection program for municipal employees works, reports Dan Noyes for KGO-TV.  In San Diego, a civic activist has had to sue to determine how the city auditor has performed in investigating and closing complaints from a whistleblower hotline, with a first hearing held on May 6 and a second set for next month. And in Sonoma County, the grand jury has concluded that owing to the very multiplicity of local programs operating without coordination, "for those trying to expose waste, fraud and abuse in government, the path can be torturous. Whistleblowers must contact one agency after another, and in the process, they can lose both their anonymity and faith in any follow-up," reports Brett Wilkison in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

Judge to City: Release Consultant's Aging 'Draft'

A judge's order means that the City of Encinitas must release to a civic watchdog a $2.8 million consultant's  study of street repair needs submitted in March of last year but made available to the public in 'final' form only last September.  The city had argued that disclosing the original draft of the report would make the staff's job of analyzing and polishing such reports too difficult.

Local Agency Sunshine Bills Avoid Fiscal Limbo

The fate of an appropriations committee's "suspense file," where legislative bills go to die because they're judged too costly, was avoided this week by two key Senate measures—one to allow voters to insulate the Brown Act from a  frequent threat of unenforceability, and another to require local agencies with websites to post local officials' expense reimbursements and all local agencies to disclose a wide variety of compensation data.

Court Denies Speech Defense of Grisly Photo Leak

The California Court of Appeal has held that a former Highway Patrol dispatch supervisor cannot argue a First Amendment defense in a lawsuit brought by the family of a teenager gruesomely mangled in a fatal auto crash, vivid photos of which he circulated by e-mail and which ended up on the Internet and were sent to the family with mocking messages. Defendant Aaron Reich, one of two dispatchers responsible for the leaked images, said he forwarded them as cautionary examples of the risks of drunken driving, reports Greg Hardesty in the Orange County Register.

Government Websites Purging Embarrassing Facts

San Diego County's Civil Service Commission has abandoned its practice of posting its agendas, minutes and audio files on its website.  The reason: To provide some privacy to county employees who have appeared before the commission on a rules violation or to pursue a discrimination complaint. And as San Diego City Beat reports, the Fair Political Practices Commission's new chair has stripped its website of information on opened  investigations, solicitous for politicians' and other political operatives' reputations.

Bill Brings Sunshine to Campus Foundations

Responding to Senator Leland Yee's amendments to his latest higher education sunshine bill, California college and university foundations and other "auxiliary organizations" have agreed to abide by transparency rules comparable to the California Public Records Act in return for keeping their donors' names confidential—except in certain circumstances.

CalAware Targets Bogus "Ad Hoc" Committees

The Oakland-based Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) is the latest—and quickest to reverse course—local agency challenged by Californians Aware for using an "ad hoc" label to allow its governing board's committees to duck the open meeting requirements of the Brown Act.

Judge: No Constitutional Right to Secretly Record

A federal judge has rejected a First Amendment defense in the lawsuit brought by the national community organizing group Acorn, whose San Diego branch office employee was secretly audio and video recorded by two conservative activists conducting an undercover sting operation.

Costa Mesa to Keep Its "Working Groups" Private

The City of Costa Mesa denies that its two-member city council "working groups" created in January are standing committees subject to the open meeting and public notice requirements of the Brown Act.  In a letter today responding to CalAware's May 10 challenge to that effect, City Attorney Thomas P. Duarte concludes that "no violations of the Brown Act have occurred" without responding to the arguments made by CalAware.  The latter's general counsel, Terry Francke, said he would recommend to the group's litigation committee that it file a court action seeking a judge's determination that would settle the dispute, plus an order to the city to conduct meetings of any of the working groups only in conformity with the open meeting law.

SEIU Bargaining: A One-sided Spectator Sport?

A unit of the Service Employees International Union representing Riverside County employees, in allowing its members to sit in to observe its bargaining sessions with the county, has led the latter to question both the lawfulness and fairness of this practice, reports Duane Gang in the Press-Enterprise. A simple response would one way or the other bring parity to the situation: invite members of the public to sit in as well.

Crushing the Windpipe of a Federal Whistleblower

If a democratic society creates a hypersecret government intelligence agency, how long will it take before large sectors of its unmonitored activity will turn wasteful, incompetent and even subversive of constitutional values—and how ferocious will its reaction be when a conscientious employee tries to call corrective attention to its deviations?

Campus Foundation Transparency Bill Advances

On a 7-1 bipartisan vote, the Senate Education Committee yesterday approved legislation supported by Californians Aware to bring greater transparency and accountability to campus-supporting foundations and other "auxiliary organizatioins" at California’s public colleges and universities.

Wanted: Ideas to Improve Online News Comments

Your suggestions are sought for technical approaches to organizing and presenting comments appended to online news stories or blogs in some saner, more thoughtful manner than just newest first or oldest first or thread hemorrhages.

The Whistleblower Minefield Gets Foggier

Whistleblowers beware: Whether the law protects your reporting of illegal or improper behavior in your organization depends critically on whether you work in a public corporation or a private company and whom you report your concerns to. And it could be getting worse if a certain colorful Congressman has anything to say about it

A Treat for Your Drive Time: Judge Alex Kosinski

The First Amendment may not be dead, but it's "fast asleep for the time being," until the law, technological innovation or both resolve baffling new challenges posed by the Internet and how it is used.  That's the view of Chief Judge Alex Kosinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, who recently spoke at Golden Gate University's third annual Intellectual Property Distinguished Speaker Program. Judge Kosinski talked about technology, bloggers, the First Amendment, his role as a judge and a lot more in this podcast you can download and listen to on the device of your choice.

Court: County Pension Benefits = Public Business

The public has a right to know the pension benefits paid to individual retired county employees, the Sacramento area district of the California Court of Appeal has unanimously ruled in the first appellate decision of its kind, after trial courts across the state have reached the same conclusion.

CalPers Corporate Governance Project Questioned

Keith Paul Bishop, a lawyer/blogger who keeps close tabs on California's Public Employees Retirement System as part of his corporate law practice, thinks it may be stretching the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act to the violation point in developing its corporate governance Focus List, through which it "encourages the market to reform companies and improve shareowner wealth for all owners."

Scores Gather to Remember a Unique Civic Hero

  (Photo credit: Eric Reed, San Gabriel Valley Tribune)

Scores of people whose lives were touched for the better by the person and work of the late Richard McKee gathered at the Doubletree Hotel in Claremont Saturday afternoon to exchange anecdotes and expressions of gratitude for having known him.

18 Years of Rape: How Much Must We Know?

Does a young woman kidnapped at age 11 and kept as a sex slave for 18 years have a right to insist that the grand jury transcript detailing her experience—which even one of her captors calls a chronicle of "evil"—be permanently sealed from the eyes of the public? Does it change your answer to know that she's about to publish a book telling her story?  An El Dorado County judge is expected to rule on the sealing request, opposed by major media, on June 2, reports Demian Bulwa for the San Francisco Chronicle.

School District Sues Transit Authority for Records

In a rare but not unheard-of challenge to governmental secrecy by another public agency, the Beverly Hills Unified School District has taken the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority to court seeking an order for release of allegedly withheld documents sought under the California Public Records Act, reports Damien Newton on the L.A.StreetsBlog.  The district opposes a planned subway tunnel under Beverly Hills High School and wants to analyze MTA records to show the feasibility of an alternate route.  It's sued now because it senses MTA is stalling.

D.A.-Capo: Don't Make Me Take off This Belt

The Orange County District Attorney has sent an unusually emphatic warning of impatience with the Board of the Capistrano Unified School District, which has shown—well—an unusually persistent pattern of thumbing its nose at the Brown Act in recent years. Scott Martindale reports for the Orange County Register.

Student Journalist Sentenced to Write an Essay

As a penance for having followed a crowd of protesters into an administration building last fall to videorecord the 11-hour occupation, U.C. Berkeley student journalist Josh Wolf—who's already spent long months in a federal jail after filming an anarchist riot—has been ordered to write an essay, reports Nanette Asimov in the San Francisco Chronicle. The assigned topic? How the university should treat student journalists.

Litigation Fund Created in Rich McKee's Name

Californians Aware (CalAware), the nonprofit organization co-founded by Richard McKee to improve transparency in government and defend free speech rights, has created a fund in his name to enable it to continue his work of enforcing such rights by going to court if necessary.

Newspapers Mass to Back McKee Brown Act Case

Less than two weeks after the death of CalAware's founding president, Rich McKee, more than 100 California newspapers have joined in a friend of the court brief supporting the lawsuit he filed last year to challenge the lawfulness of 30 or so unannounced but official luncheon meetings of the Tulare County Board of Supervisors, held in 2009 but since discontinued.

Roundup 5/2/11: Forum Law News, Comment

Bell Bills: Measures React to City Scandals    The CalAware-supported AB 392 (Alejo) passed its first hurdle in the Assembly Local Government Committee last week on a 6-1 vote and was part of a bundle of measures launched to avert repetitions of the crimes and other excesses uncovered in Bell and other Los Angeles County cities, reports Patrick McGreevy in the Los Angeles Times.  AB 392 would require all local government bodies that have websites to post their meeting agendas and related staff reports on them at least 72 hours in advance.

Same-day Access to Court Records Trimmed   The CalAware co-sponsored SB 326 (Yee) appeared due to take a severe haircut in the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow (Tuesday). Instead of requiring the California Judicial Council to adopt a rule requiring trial courts to provide press and public with day-one access to most new court filings in civil lawsuits and criminal cases, the bill may well be altered, at the insistence of the Judicial Council, to allow an 18 month delay in adopting the rules, and even then applying them only to courts that have "fully implemented" the new computer-based Case Management System that has proven so costly and problem-ridden. Whom to thank: Committee Chair Noreen Evans sits on the Judicial Council.

Prison System Watchdog to Be Dismantled?    The Senate Public Safety Committee will give a first hearing to two bills tomorrow (Tuesday) proposing to shut down the in-house Office of the Inspector General in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, reports Don Thompson for the Associated Press.

CHP Sued for Arresting Preachers at DMV Office    You're waiting in line outside the DMV office when a fired-up preacher starts haranguing you from a planter strip in the parking lot. Is he a big enough violation of your rights to have him arrested for trespass?  A CHP officer thought so a couple of months ago, and now the preachers—others were arrested later in the day—are suing the Patrol for violating their First Amedment rights, reports John Asbury for the Press-Enterprise in Riverside.