Copyright 2005, Long Beach Press-Telegram

Public access is shadowy territory
Despite Proposition 59, government
agencies remain tough nuts to crack.

(Long Beach Press-Telegram 3/12/05) -- Even with a new constitutional amendment on open government, California agencies at the local and state level still make it hard for the public and press to get the information they're entitled to, critics say.

Average citizens often have trouble getting basic information from local government, while large corporations and privacy-rights groups are fighting to have more information kept secret.

"I think things have improved, in part because of the passage of Proposition 59, but there are still lots of areas where public access is still being frustrated in a serious way," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, composed of media and legal organizations that support open government.

First Amendment groups, newspapers and other media are highlighting open-government issues this week, which they have dubbed "Sunshine Week."

Many local government agencies have yet to fully digest Prop 59, advocates said. The constitutional amendment passed by voters in November was written in broad ideological terms emphasizing the importance of open government, but does not provide guidelines for specific situations, leaving local and state government agencies plenty of leeway to interpret it.

For example, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has complied with the coalition's request, based on Prop 59, to release his personal calendars, an unprecedented act for a governor. But he has refused to release the calendars of his top aides. He said he was releasing the calendars voluntarily and did not concede he was legally required to under Prop. 59.

Plan abandoned

Schwarzenegger had earlier stoked the hopes of open-government activists in the 2003 recall campaign when he unveiled a "sunshine' policy designed to eliminate the shroud of secrecy that critics say envelopes political dealings at the Capitol.

That included a plan to ban fund-raising during the budget process, but it was abandoned last year after state lawyers determined it would be unconstitutional, administration officials said. He currently supports a new bill by Assemblyman Bob Huff, R-City of Industry, that would limit, though not totally ban, fund-raising during the budget process.

He also supported Prop 59 during the ballot measure campaign.

Under current law, the executive branch of government is subject to the Public Records Act, which is more stringent than the Legislative Open Records Act that applies to the Legislature.

Schwarzenegger sponsored a bill last year to make the Legislature subject to stronger open-government laws, but it was killed in committee.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez told the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA) last month that he "would be supportive' of efforts to make the Legislature subject to more open-government measures.

At the same time, there is a growing clash between those who would like to see the government provide even more information and those who fear it could cause increasing intrusions into personal lives.

Much of the battle now centers on a simple logistical issue: It is now just so much easier to obtain information through the Internet, that misusing it has become that much more prevalent. In the past, obtaining records took work driving down to the local courthouse or county clerk's office and digging out musty files from a basement, then compiling them by hand.

Today most of that information is available online in formats that make it easy to gather and disseminate in a wholesale way. That has led to increasing intrusions by telemarketers and identity thieves, so privacy advocates are fighting to have more information kept secret.

Tom Newton, general counsel for the CNPA, said even with the passage of Prop 59, access to public information in California and most of the country has gotten worse in recent years. Post-Sept. 11 security concerns fueled the change, along with the increasing prevalence of identity theft and worries about large corporations widely sharing sensitive data about their customers.

"It's easy for people to spout off about how great public access is under the Public Records Act when you're seeking records that are really relatively hard to get," Newton said.

"But with the creation of the Internet and the ability of real, free, 24-hour, in-your-bedroom deep access to government that could be offered by the Internet, then the tune changes and all kinds of barriers now get put up in order to prevent real cheap and deep access in to government databases."

By Harrison Sheppard and David M. Drucker