Money, Not Principles, Sparks Public Records Brawl
The very public brawl over potential changes to the state’s Public Records Act has been billed as a battle over principles. It’s not. It’s all about the money. When the media, First Amendment activists, local government officials and, sadly, most legislators realized that the budget bill the Legislature passed last week made it optional for […]
Sacramento’s War on Public Participation
You can’t be too cynical when it comes to public officials and their desire to keep public records secret. And thinking cynically, it made perfect sense for Gov. Jerry Brown and state Senate Democrats to try to tame the controversy about their attempted gutting of the state’s public records law by offering up a proposed […]
Who SB 71 Really Hurts…
I know Sacramento is located geographically in California, but there are days when it acts so contrary to what is happening around it, that it makes one wonder whether the Capitol is somehow situated in a parallel universe. Let me get this straight: at a time when the public has learned via public records requests […]
Stop Sacramento’s Assault on Local Government
As if the huge fiscal impacts of realignment (AB109-prisoner early release) weren’t tough enough for California’s cities to absorb, Sacramento is launching another assault on certain local government treasuries. The latest attack is Senate Bill 7, sponsored by Senators Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Cannella (R-Ceres). The bill seeks to punish charter cities-like Modesto- that use local […]
A Public Health Initiative That Will Make You Sick
As a result of an increasingly nasty dispute with the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has collected a sufficient number of signatures to qualify its “City of Los Angeles Public Health Protection Act” (the “Initiative”) for the ballot in June of 2014. If passed by a majority of […]