About CFAC

Mission

• Legal Hotline
• Litigation
• Newsletter, Op-Ed Columns
• Legal Handbook
• Educational Programs
• Legislation
• New Initiatives
• Financial Support
• Board of Directors
• Staff

Activities

Legal Hotline

CFAC's Legal Hotline service, available on the Internet and by phone, provides free legal information and assistance to individuals frustrated by recalcitrant bureaucracies, as well as reporters who have been threatened with law suits. The quality of legal information, given by top media lawyers under contract with CFAC, is extremely high. As word of the Hotline's availability has spread, demand for the service has skyrocketed, from approximately 30 inquiries/month in 2004 to well over 80/month today.

Litigation

CFAC has initiated a program of strategic litigation. Strategic means (1) identifying an important issue, and then creating the strongest possible test case (rather than waiting for plaintiffs to come to CFAC), and (2) selecting defendants who, because of their prominence, assure that a successful outcome can have far-reaching effects.

CFAC successfully sued CALPERS, California's public employee retirement system, to force it to disclose the management fees it pays to venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds in which CALPERS invests. Because of its huge size, CALPERS is the de facto standard-setter for the pension industry nationally. When CALPERS settled CFAC's suit, agreeing to most of the fee disclosures CFAC had sought, pension plans across the country followed suit.

CFAC sued Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to obtain his calendars of meetings and those of his top aides. CFAC argued that a state Supreme Court decision sustaining a denial of access to these records was implicitly overturned by a newly enacted Constitutional amendment sponsored by CFAC and which the governor had championed during the election. Schwarzenegger settled, agreeing to turn over nearly all the calendars.

The huge publicity attending this decision created a new political reality in California. Although the law on access to gubernatorial calendars remains unclear, all statewide office holders and many officials at the local and regional level were forced, by political pressure, to disclose their calendars, too.

In other cases, CFAC is currently suing the California judiciary in an effort to establish that the courts are subject to a public access right for records relating to their administrative (as opposed to their adjudicative) functions. Since most state court systems, like California's, are immune from FOI laws, a successful outcome in CFAC's suit could have a favorable impact across the country.

Newsletter and Op-Ed Columns

As a First Amendment organization, CFAC believes that it must exercise its own right of free speech---and do so loudly. CFAC publishes a twice-monthly newsletter distributed (by email) to nearly 4,000 supporters. Each newsletter carries an original commentary, on First Amendment issues, written by executive director Peter Scheer. The commentaries are republished regularly on the Op-Ed pages of newspapers across the state, including the Sacramento Bee, San Jose Mercury News, Orange County Register, San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Diego Union-Tribune, as well as leading legal publications, the web "zine" Slate, and dozens more smaller daily and weekly papers in California.

Legal Handbook

CFAC publishes the First Amendment Legal Notebook, a definitive book-length guide for citizens and journalists. The Handbook, to be updated and reissued in December 2006, is the definitive legal primer on rights of access to public records, legislative meetings, agency proceedings, and court hearings and records in California.

Educational Programs

CFAC conducts conferences to educate the public on First Amendment issues and developments. The organization's annual Free Speech Assembly, held in 2005 at Cal-State Fullerton in Riverside County, featured keynote addresses from First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams and Internet journalism pioneer Dan Gillmor. CFAC also honored Mark Felt (aka "Deep Throat") and provided the first public forum for Judith Miller following her release from jail.

CFAC's 2006 Assembly will be produced jointly with the UC California Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley. Featured speakers include Arianna Huffington, Daniel Ellsberg, Commentary Magazine senior editor Gabriel Schoenfeld, National Security Archive founder Scott Armstrong, Dan Gillmor, founder and Director of Citizen Media, and Sacramento Bee political columnist Dan Weintraub, among others. To reach the largest possible audience--and, in particular, to attract as many students as possible--- Assembly registration this year will be free.

Legislation

As a nonprofit, CFAC does not lobby the California Legislature. However, it does engage in oversight of the legislative process, working with legislators and committee staffs, and providing testimony in support of First Amendment-friendly bills, and against bills that would turn the clock back. And in a major effort, CFAC authored and sponsored FOI legislation, which was ultimately put before the voters as a ballot measure-Proposition 59-to amend the California constitution to include open-government rights.

"Prop 59" passed in November 2004 with an overwhelming 84 percent of the vote.

Since then, CFAC has been engaged in an aggressive campaign, including law suits, public jaw-boning, Op-Ed colums, and assisting with numerous new stories, to ensure that courts and lawmakers interpret the proposition in ways that mandate greater government transparency.

New Initiatives

Starting this year, CFAC is expanding its services and activities to reach key immigrant communities, many of whose members are unaccustomed to asserting rights of participation in a representative democracy.

Focusing on the two biggest such communities in California, foreign-born Hispanic (Mexican and Central American, primarily) and Chinese (mainland and Taiwanese) families, CFAC's objective is to increase the awareness and use, among these groups, of key open-government legal tools. These include California's open-meeting law, the Brown Act, and its FOI statute, the Public Records Act.

Financial Support

CFAC receives its funding from membership dues, foundation grants, individual and corporate contributions, portions of attorney's fee awards in selected cases, and income from two modest endowments.

Major supporters include: Rowland and Patricia Rebele, the McCormick-Tribune Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Central Valley Foundation, Los Angeles Times, McClatchey Publishing and the Sacramento Bee, Kirsch Foundation, San Jose Mercury News, Copley Publishing and the San Diego Union-Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Orange County Register, Susanna Bedell, Harvey Furgatch, Oakland Tribune, Press-Enterprise, California Newspapers Publishers Association (CNPA), Davis Wright Tremaine, Sheppard Mullin, DLA Piper Rudnick and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher.

Founding Supporters

Significant startup support was provided by the national Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In addition, CFAC received significant support during its startup phase from these Founding Members:

Blade Citizen of Oceanside (now North County Times); California Freedom of Information Committee; California Society of Newspaper Editors; Champion Publications, Chino; Ernst & Young; Five Cities Times-Press-Recorder, Arroyo Grande; Holtville Tribune; Imperial Valley Press; Lesher Communications, Inc.; Los Angeles Daily News; Los Angeles Times; Mort Levine;  Marin Independent Journal; Mariposa Gazette; McClatchy Newspapers; Metro, San Jose; Orange County Register; Palo Alto Weekly; Press-Enterprise, Riverside; Rowland Rebele; San Francisco Bay Guardian; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Independent; San Jose Mercury News; San Mateo Times; Society of Professional Journalists (Central California and Nevada Pro Chapters); University of Southern California and Howard Williams.

Officers

• James M. Chadwick, President of the Board, Attorney, Sheppard Mullin
  
• Steve Montiel, President-Elect, USC Institute for Justice and Journalism
  
• Paul Gullixson, Past President, Editorial Page Editor, Santa Rosa Press Democrat
  
• Mel Opotowsky, Treasurer, newspaper consultant and former managing editor, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside

Board of Directors

• Judy Alexander, Attorney, Judy Alexander Law
• Kevin Bankston, Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation; San Francisco
• Stephen Barnett, Emeritus Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law - Boalt Hall
• Neil Budde, Vice President and Editor in Chief of Yahoo! News
• Bruce B. Brugmann, Editor and Publisher, San Francisco Bay Guardian
• Duffy Carolan, Attorney, Davis Wright Tremaine
• Jerry Ceppos, Dean, The Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno
• Guylyn Cummins, Attorney, Sheppard Mullin
• Edward Davis, Attorney, Orrick
• Daniel Day, Managing Editor, Modesto Bee
• Dan Gillmor, founder and Director of Center for Citizen Media, author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People
• Jay Harris, Publisher, Mother Jones
• Michael Hoffman, Training Editor, Ventura County Star
• William S. Johnson, Publisher, Palo Alto Weekly
• David E. Lee, Executive Director, Chinese American Voters Education Committee (CAVEC)
• Allen McCombs, Publisher Emeritus, Chino Champion
• K.C. Meadows, Editor, Ukiah Daily Journal
• Steve Montiel, USC Institute for Justice and Journalism
• Ginger Moorhouse, Publisher & CEO, Bakersfield California
• Karl Olson, Attorney, Levy Ram & Olson
• Rick Pullen, Dean of the College of Communications, Cal-State, Fullerton
• John Raess, Associated Press SF Bureau Chief
  
• Rowland Rebele, Newspaper Consultant, Aptos, major CFAC benefactor
• Dick Rogers, Reader Representative, The San Francisco Chronicle
• Martin Weinberger, Publisher, Claremont Courier
• Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel, Google
• Arnold York, Publisher, Malibu Times
  

• Dan Weikel, Reporter, The Los Angeles Times
  
• Carole Wagner Vallianos, Attorney, Manhattan Beach
  
• Barbara Inatsugu, open government activist, Santa Monica
  
• Morton I. Levine, Publisher Emeritus, Milpitas Post
  
• Barbara Blinderman, Attorney, Moskowitz, Brestoff, Winston & Blinderman; Los Angeles
• Ray Herndon, Regional Computer Projects Editor, Los Angeles Times
  

CFAC Staff

Peter Scheer, CFAC Executive Director since June 2004. A lawyer and journalist, Scheer was editor and publisher of The Recorder, a daily legal newspaper in San Francisco, and publisher of Legal Times, a Washington, DC-based weekly on law and lobbying. Scheer practiced appellate law in Washington, DC, both in the U.S. Justice Department and in private practice. He was a partner in the Washington, DC firm of Onek, Klein & Farr, and was general counsel to the National Security Archive. Scheer has argued appellate cases in most of the federal courts of appeal and in the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2006 Scheer was awarded the James Madison Freedom of Information Award by the Society of Professional Journalists. Scheer was founder of callaw.com, a legal news and information site (now part of ALM's law.com), and of yourwall.com, an online fine art photography gallery. Scheer's articles on First Amendment issues have appeared in numerous publications, both print and online, including the Sacramento Bee, Slate.com, San Jose Mercury News, Salon.com, Orange County Register, San Francisco Chronicle, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Los Angeles Daily Journal, The Recorder, American Lawyer magazine.

Scheer received his JD in 1978 from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review. He received his BA at Amherst College, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

Kelly Dunleavy, Executive Assistant. Kelly graduated from UC Berkeley in 2007, with a B.A in International Political Economy. While at school, Kelly was the Editor-in-Chief for the Berkeley Political Review, as well as a member of the Triathlon team. She has written for a number of local papers and was the Assistant Editor for the now defunct Senses Magazine.

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