Copyright, Sacramento Bee 2008

State access law ignored by many local agencies

By Stan Oklobdzija
5/21/2008

Ever wonder how much money your mayor got from developers? Want to know how much your city councilman spent on his last election bid? Want to find out this information without having to supply personal information about yourself?

Well, tough luck if you live in some communities.

Seven out of 13 city halls and county election offices around the region failed a Bee test of a state law that guarantees public access to the financial disclosure forms for elected officials.

However, after The Bee notified several cities that had failed, officials changed their procedures to comply with the law.

The law states that these forms must be available during business hours and that the person must not be asked to identify his or herself when requesting them. If copies are requested, they must be made immediately and for no more than 10 cents a page, the law says.

In the test, a Bee reporter walked into the office where the law mandates the documents must be held, and without identifying his or herself, asked to see the financial disclosure forms for a period of time in 2007. The reporter then asked for copies to be made.

The cities of Roseville, Folsom, Placerville, Rocklin and Galt failed in meeting all or parts of the law's requirements.

In Roseville and Folsom, the reporter was asked to write a name, address, phone number and affiliation on a form. The reporter was then told the city clerk would review their request and get back.

Folsom called back a day later and had the copies available at City Hall. Roseville, which never called back, only informed The Bee that the documents were ready only after being called for comment on this story, nearly a week after the original request was made.

In Rocklin, the reporter was told the forms weren't available and that he should to check back in a few days. A city official later said the records were available but the counter person that day didn't know that.

Galt handed the reporter a form requiring a name, address, phone number and organization before making the forms available. For copies, the city charged 50 cents for the first page.

An employee at the Placerville City Clerk's Office told the reporter the forms were available at the El Dorado County Elections Office, but a clerk there sent the reporter back to the city offices.

By contrast, the cities of Sacramento, Citrus Heights, Elk Grove and Auburn, as well as Sacramento and Placer counties, passed all three parts of the tests.

The city of Rancho Cordova and El Dorado County both received "fair" ratings because they asked the reporter for a name and affiliation before making the documents available. It is unclear whether the documents would have been available to a private citizen.

"Of all the records that you can imagine that local governments might have ... this is the one that should be most freely available," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, a non-profit organization that advocates for open government and First Amendment rights.

"The legal obligation to have them readily available is clear, the demand to see them is fairly high and there is no real excuse not to have them readily available," he said.

Enacted in 1974, the Political Reform Act set new standards in how and when elected officials must disclose how much money they received and from whom they received it.

Designed to combat influence peddling and corruption, the act mandated timely filing of a financial interest statement known as Form 460's.

The act spells out in detail how that information must be made available to the public.

"The idea is to prevent political gamesmanship with these important public documents," said Roman Porter, spokesman for the Fair Political Practices Commission, the state agency that regulates campaign donations and political disclosure. "(By law) no conditions can be applied to inhibit or slow down the ability for a citizen to access them."

Some cities objected to their low ratings.