The Sacramento Bee, in an editorial in today’s paper about Vallejo’s bankrupcy, backs the idea of legislation to shine some light on compensation contracts between municipalities and public employee unions. The editorial cites an article by CFAC’s executive director.

Here’s the SacBee editorial:

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Editorial: Let public in on government labor deals

Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Peter Scheer, who heads the California First Amendment Coalition, has a novel idea: End the secrecy surrounding local government labor contract negotiations.

You can understand the logic and the urgency behind his idea when you consider the situation in Vallejo. That city is filing for bankruptcy. Why? Local officials approved salary and benefits costs for current employees and retirees that are more than the city can afford.

Scheer’s point is that California law allows local government officials “to avoid public discussion of the true cost and fiscal impact of the pay deals that they have approved.” By the time the public sees anything, a union contract already is a done deal and no changes can be made.

In some states, all phases of the bargaining process, including negotiations, are open to the public (though government officials may discuss strategy for labor negotiations in closed session). Minnesota, Florida, Kansas and Tennessee are examples.

California is at the opposite extreme. The state’s Brown Act not only allows negotiations about salaries and benefits to be conducted behind closed doors, it allows local government officials to vote on a final agreement in closed session. Only after that vote and union acceptance of the contract does the local government have to let the public in on the deal. And only then does the text of the contract become a public record – when it’s too late to change anything.

The situation in Vallejo should cause legislators to revisit this nonsense. At a minimum, legislators should require local governments, before any vote, to publish a proposed contract and prepare a single, authoritative, easy-to-read document listing all parts of the offer, including cost. They also should require local governments to hold a public hearing to consider the financial ramifications of every labor agreement. The vote to approve or reject the contract should be held in public session.

The Vallejo debacle highlights a basic truth: the public that pays the bills should be able to see and question a contract before a vote, not after.

http://www.sacbee.com/editorials/story/932926.html

AB 1978
AB 1978, a Bill that would have closed public access to ‘basemap’ data for Geographic Information Systems (GIS), put forth by Assemblymember Jose Solorio, was dropped after opposition from the GIS/GeoData and freedom of information communities.

GIS “basemap” data is used to create the base layer for all local computer mapping. The bill sought to exempt from the Public Records Act, which requires all government data to be available to the public, “metadata, listings of metadata and assembled model data”.

CFAC has filed suit to force Santa Clara County to make available its county basemap as a public record, subject only to payment of modest copying fees. CFAC won in Superior Court and the case is now on appeal.  AB 1978 would have effectively overturned that pro-disclosure ruling.

The GIS community was rallied by Bruce Joffe, a GIS expert and consultant to CFAC in the Santa Clara case, to push Assemblymember Solorio to drop the bill.  Following publication of an open letter in Directions Magazine, the technologically-saavy GIS community quickly spread the word through geo-data blogs and on such sites as GIS Café, GeoSpatial Solutons, GeoPlace and POB Magazine.

The bill didn’t make it out of committee and Solorio, in a statement from his office, said he “decided not to push it forward”.

AB 1855
AB 1855 began as a bill about police interrogation tactics, but, after it lost that focus, Assemblymember Anthony Portantino considered adding two amendments that would have made police officer names and salaries private information.

The State Supreme Court ruled last year that salaries and officer names (though not personal contact info) are public information and subject to public disclosure laws. The AB 1855 amendments would have reversed these rulings.

The California Newspaper Publishers Association, CFAC and other organizations opposed the bill. Assemblymember Portantino ultimately decided to pull the Amendments.

SB 1370
In 2006, LAUSD newspaper advisor, Darryl Adams, allowed a student to write an editorial criticizing the school’s random search policy and subsequently found himself removed from his position as newspaper advisor, basketball coach and even basketball game announcer. Stories like this lead State Senator Leland Yee to propose SB 1370.

SB 1370 prohibits retaliation towards adults who are protecting a student’s right to exercise freedom of speech or freedom of the press.

Even now, in this edition of CFAC’s Flash Newsletter, is a story about a Vacaville newspaper advisor who allowed a student to write an opinion piece about a controversy at the high school. For this decision, the advisor claioms he lost his advisory role.

SB 1370, which would combat both these instances of abuse, passed out of the State Senate in a vote of 35-2 and is now awaiting approval from the Assembly

AB 2296
After a spate of violent attacks by animal-rights activists, including an assault on a researcher’s husband at her home outside University of California-Santa Cruz and a Molotov cocktail thrown through the home of a University of California-Los Angeles researcher, Assemblymember Gene Mullin proposed AB 2296, sponsored by the University of California, which would keep private all names of animal researchers.

However, the bill was construed broadly to include any “animal enterprise employees” and to permit the non-disclosure of “any information relating to animal research activities”. It is currently under close scrutiny by freedom of information groups, including CFAC.

The bill was approved by the original Committee and was passed on to the Appropriations Committee for further review. After CFAC and other organizations’ advocacy, the bill will be rewritten to take into account the public disclosure considerations, while still allowing for the protection of the researchers.

SB 1696
The Senate also recently passed SB 1696, revising the Public Records Act to prohibit government agencies from making contractual agreements with third parties that, as part of the agreement, keep information about the agreement confidential.

SB 1696 was approved by the State Senate in a vote of 33-1 and is awaiting a vote in the Assembly.

--Kelly Dunleavy, CFAC staff

To: CFAC

I read and appreciated your article about China and the Internet which appeared recently in the International Herald Tribune. As a 20 year resident of China who has been on line here since 1996, I am intimately acquainted with the problems one encounters accessing information on line. As China becomes more sophisticated in its monitoring efforts (using equipment and technology developed in no small part by American companies), the situation is generally getting worse, not better.

Of the various greed driven rationales for making the compromises of principle necessary to participate in China’s Internet business, the one I find the most insidious posits that Chinese people are too busy shopping to care about freedom of speech, political rights or the rule of law. Certainly there are some Chinese whose lives seem to revolve around a mind numbing sort of consumerism. They are not that difficult to recognize; after all, more than a few Americans lead similar lives.

The “Chinese don’t care” rationalization, however, conveniently ignores the fact that many of those successful, middle class (as they are now labeled) Chinese filling shopping malls are thoughtful, articulate people. People who are discouraged and often angered by the arbitrary power of their government and its officials, the pervasive corruption they experience in everyday life, by the mixture of bland facts, half truths, distortions and occasional outright lies they hear or read in the government controlled media. These are people who realize they are getting a politically sanitized version of events or being mislead by official “news”. They realize that the state media often “lies by omission”, leaving out key facts which run counter to the “correct” point of view. At the same time the effort needed to find reliable, alternative sources of information in China is too much for them. Most of them know there are such alternatives out there, even in China, but are unwilling to take or do not have the time to wade through the rumors, fairy tales and wild stories which coexist with real information on Chinese blogs and bulletin boards.

The “Chinese don’t care” rationalization also conveniently ignores the enormous numbers of less articulate but no less thoughtful Chinese who are struggling to get by. The huge floating populations working for low wages in thousands of factories and construction sites in big cities all over the country. People with little money, little education and no upward mobility who have remained at home in small cities and villages. When it comes to these people we are told they are too busy trying to make ends meet to be concerned about \"luxuries\" like political rights or freedom of speech.

My experience suggests quite the opposite is often the case. Many low income Chinese know very well they are at the mercy of a system which is blatantly unfair and stacked against them. They know they lack the freedom to redress their grievances effectively. While they may not know any of the criteria scholars use to determine if a system is ruled by law; they know from personal experience that there is no such thing as the rule of law in China when it comes to the abuses they suffer. In short they know that they are powerless. And they know that going up against those with power - be it a supervisor cheating them of wages, the wealthy owner of an unsafe workplace or an official extorting extra-legal fees for \"services\" - is a risky business indeed, one in which they are more likely than not to be the loser.

In our efforts to find reasonable ways to be engaged with China, one of the first things we need to do is recognize that US and other Western companies directly benefit from the Chinese people\’s lack of political freedoms. Overseas companies can make favorable deals with Chinese government and business leaders (sometimes the same people wearing different hats) who are not accountable to their workers or ordinary Chinese people. If those ordinary people do not like the deals which emerge or feel they have been wronged or injured by powerful companies, complaining can involve considerable risk, particularly if the complaints in any way challenge the government\’s monopoly on power.  We should not let the cheap rationalizations and weasel words of Western executives, consultants and public relations liars obscure the facts. When we press publicly for human rights in China, when we question the efficacy of the rule of law in China, when we ask companies at least to be straightforward about how they must do business in China, we may anger the Chinese government, but we support the large number of Chinese people who do care very much about political freedom in their country.

Steve Barru
Beijing
http://www.stevebarru.com

Earlier today the Associated Press, in conjunction with CFAC, announced the winners of the 2008 Sunlight Freedom of Information Award.

The Sunlight award is given to the two stories in the California-Nevada region that best exemplify the use of public records in an effort to effectively shed light on issues of civic importance.

The award is judged and co-sponsored by CFAC and is given in association with the AP Newswriting and Photo Contest, which celebrate the best in print journalism from 2007. The winner of the Sunlight Freedom of Information honor is awarded a $500 prize, which will be delivered to the recipients later this spring.

A complete list of winners can be found here.

Sunlight Freedom of Information Award:

1. Jenifer B. McKim / The Orange County Register / Dying in Silence.
2. David Hasemyer / The San Diego Union-Tribune / How Sunroad’s Building Was Cleared for Takeoff.

A federal grand jury looking into government leaks to New York Times reporter James Risen have been shown phone records of their calls with the reporter.  How did the Justice Department get its hands on those records without Risen or the newspaper knowing anything about it?

Here’s the Times’ own story:

April 12, 2008
Leak Inquiry Said to Focus on Calls With Times

By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON — Former government officials have recently been called before a federal grand jury and confronted with phone records documenting calls with a reporter who covers intelligence issues at The New York Times, according to people with detailed knowledge of the investigation.

A former official who was called before the grand jury in Alexandria, Va., said that he was shown extensive phone records that documented the date and duration of conversations with James Risen, a Times reporter in Washington, and that prosecutors were trying to identify Mr. Risen’s sources. Mr. Risen is fighting a grand jury subpoena for testimony about his sources for a 2006 book on the Central Intelligence Agency.

Justice Department officials have confirmed that prosecutors are trying to identify Mr. Risen’s sources for the book, “State of War,” and for articles he wrote for The Times about the nation’s spy agencies, to determine if his sources violated laws on the sharing of classified information.

But spokesmen for the department would not comment on details of the grand jury investigation, which is being conducted out of the federal courthouse in Alexandria.

The grand jury witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to draw new attention to himself, and others with knowledge of the investigation say it is unclear whose phone records were obtained by the Justice Department — if they were records of calls made from Mr. Risen’s phones or from the phones of officials who may have talked to him. The Times has not been subpoenaed for Mr. Risen’s office phone records, although there are other ways that the department could obtain them, possibly by a subpoena to phone companies without any notice to the newspaper. Department guidelines give prosecutors the ability to subpoena a reporter’s phone records if they obtain approval from the attorney general’s office.

Mr. Risen shared the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for articles that exposed the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, and the Justice Department’s effort to identify the sources of those articles and of his book is one of several federal leak investigations singling out reporters and their sources.

In 2005, Judith Miller, then a reporter for The Times, was jailed for nearly three months after she initially refused to identify news sources in an investigation of leaks that identified a covert C.I.A. operative.

A freelance reporter in California, Josh Wolf, was freed from a federal prison last April after 226 days; he was imprisoned after refusing to testify before a grand jury and turn over tapes that he had made of an anarchist rally that turned violent in San Francisco.

The Justice Department is trying to block efforts in Congress to create a federal law to shield reporters from identifying their sources; a shield law exists in many states. The department has argued that a federal shield law would restrict its ability to identify government officials and others who leak classified information to reporters that might damage national security.

Joel Kurtzberg, a lawyer in New York who is representing Mr. Risen on behalf of both The Times and his book publisher, The Free Press, said he had no comment on the investigation.

Lucy A. Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, suggested that the investigation was one of several “really egregious” efforts by the Bush administration to limit press freedoms by intimidating reporters and their sources.

Ms. Dalglish said in an interview that as a result of Mr. Risen’s case and others, the committee was recommending that reporters stop using their home and office phones to communicate with sources on sensitive topics. “Do your reporting the old fashioned way — meet your sources on a park bench,” she said.

In January, Mr. Risen received a subpoena that, his lawyers said, appeared intended to force him to reveal his sources for a specific chapter in “State of War” that described efforts by the C.I.A. to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program. None of the material from that chapter appeared in The Times. The book also expanded on Mr. Risen’s reporting on the domestic eavesdropping program.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Christopher Edley, Jr. , Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, has published a thoughtful statement explaining why, much as he deplores the legal “advice” law professor John Yoo gave to President Bush, Yoo’s tenure at the law school is protected by principles of freedom of speech and academic freedom. Yoo infamously opined that President Bush had authority, notwithstaning statutes and treaties to the contrary, to authorize torture of terrorist suspects.

Here’s Edley’s statement:

While serving in the Department of Justice, Professor John Yoo wrote memoranda that officials used as the legal basis for policies concerning detention and interrogation techniques in our efforts to combat terrorism. Both the subject and his reasoning are controversial, leading the New York Times (editorial, April 4), the National Lawyers’ Guild, and hundreds of individuals from around the world to criticize or at least question Professor Yoo’s continuing employment at UC Berkeley School of Law. As dean, but speaking only for myself, I offer the following explanation, although with no expectation that it will be completely satisfying to anyone.

READ MORE

Have CFAC’s provocative First Amendment news and commentary delivered to you.  CFAC now offers an RSS feed that allows people to stay abreast of CFAC news and opinion without even coming to our website—although that’s something we would not encourage. 

The RSS feed works with iGoogle, myYahoo! and all other RSS readers. 

The California First Amendment Coalition is now on Facebook and MySpace.  You can join our official Cause, The Resistance. Or you can start your own Cause and select CFAC as a beneficiary.

The Causes application allows people to support their favorite organizations, through tax-deductible contributions, or simply through joining the Cause. 

Let your online friends and colleagues know that you resist excessive government secrecy and censorship by joining The Resistance on Facebook and MySpace.

An amendment to a bill seeks to push police salary and other basic information about officers back out of public view. The bill comes on the heels of two state Supreme Court rulings last year finding that salaries and other basic information about police officers are indeed public records. AB 1855, authored by Assemblyman Anthony J. Portantino, D-La Canada Flintridge, would declare that the salaries of police officers as well as their badge numbers and individual identities are private and cannot be publicly disclosed. The bill’s sponsor is the Peace Officers Research Association of California, a group that lobbies for officers.

Here’s the story from the San Jose Mercury News.