The Sacramento Bee

1/29/04

Governor is breaking his promise on public records

By Daniel Weintraub -- Bee Columnist

Three weeks before last October's recall election, standing in front of a vintage locomotive inside the California Railroad Museum, Arnold Schwarzenegger promised to make California's government as transparent as any in the nation.

"The people of this state do not trust their government," Schwarzenegger said. "They feel it is corrupted by dirty money, closed doors and backroom dealings."

Aides said Schwarzenegger, if elected, would propose reforms making public virtually every document in the government's possession, from the governor's calendar of meetings to drafts of proposals from his advisers, even internal e-mails.

Schwarzenegger chose his location that day, he said, in deference to Hiram Johnson, the early 20th century governor whose reforms smashed the railroad lobby and returned control of government to the people. Schwarzenegger's election, using the recall provision that Johnson brought to California, was supposed to be a reprise of that peaceful revolution.

But since becoming governor, Schwarzenegger hasn't lived up to that promise. Like all of his recent predecessors, he seems to be learning the value of secrecy, to be enjoying the cocoon in which a governor can operate. Either that, or he's listening too much to the lawyers.

To his credit, Schwarzenegger is backing a constitutional amendment that will appear on the November ballot and which, if approved by the voters, would place the burden of proof on government officials who seek to keep records from public view. But that measure was in the legislative hopper before Schwarzenegger even became a candidate for governor. He has yet to even put the rest of his campaign proposals into bill form and introduce them in the Legislature.

The biggest test of his open-records policy has been The Sacramento Bee's pursuit of documents that would show how each of the government's offices and agencies believe that pending state layoffs would affect the services they provide. Some of these documents also might describe alternatives to the particular set of layoffs chosen by former Gov. Gray Davis and now under review by Schwarzenegger.

The Bee's reporters aren't the only ones who believe these documents should be public. When Davis was governor, Republicans in the Legislature also demanded their release, saying the people had a right to know what options their leaders would consider before adopting a course of action for cutting state payrolls.

The day after he took office, Schwarzenegger told reporters at a news conference that the layoff plans would soon be released to the public.

"Very soon, we will have plan in mind, and you will see it," he said. "We will share everything with the press. This will be a very unusual situation."

But weeks went by, and his office continued to resist. Earlier this week, the Department of Finance, citing the same Public Records Act law upon which Davis relied, informed The Bee that the documents would not be released. To make the recommendations public, the department's lawyer wrote, would chill future private discussions among government officials about proposals that might be considered by the governor.

"Such discussion is essential for the department to effectively perform its function as the Cabinet-level agency that is the chief fiscal policy adviser to the governor in preparing the governor's annual financial plan for the state," wrote Department of Finance counsel Susan Geanacou.

But that wasn't the final word. Schwarzenegger, speaking to reporters Tuesday, once again suggested that he would disclose the documents.

"As soon as we have the full information available, you will get it," he said. "And believe me, because I see that there is a lot of pressure building from the press, I told my team to speed the process up as fast as they can so we can get the information out there. We will provide the information whether it is legally required or not."

But not all of the information. The governor's communications director, Rob Stutzman, told The Bee that the administration would withhold from public scrutiny any documents the administration considers "work process," which, if released, would make it more difficult for government officials to "think freely and deliberatively."

The real story here is that Schwarzenegger, or his aides, don't want the public to know the budget-cutting options the government has considered and rejected, and to be able to compare those options, and their potential effects, to the choices the governor ultimately decides to implement. Their resistance is understandable. Making those details public would complicate the governor's ability to argue for his plan.

As a candidate, Schwarzenegger said that the people's right to know what their government is doing was more important than the political convenience of the governor and his staff. Now, it seems, Gov. Schwarzenegger sees things the other way around.

That's a bad sign, for many reasons. Schwarzenegger's failure to keep his promise on public records suggests that he is falling prey to a disease that inflicts nearly every person elected to public office. He is losing the reformer's mind-set he held during the campaign and beginning to see himself as a defender of the government rather than an advocate for the people who put him in office.