Could there be a small break in the dam protecting records of California’s former governors?
Maybe. Last month, I received notice that former (and perhaps future) Gov. Jerry Brown had granted me a waiver from state laws that permit him and other former governors to restrict access to their papers for 50 years or until their death, whichever is later.
The waiver applies only to me, however, and not the public at large. (Peter Scheer of the California First Amendment Coalition told me that he received a similar waiver). The terrible 50-year restriction – part of a state law that effectively gives governors personal control over public papers – remains in place.
In an email, Zackery Morazzini, senior deputy attorney general, said my request for access was “only recently brought to the attention of the former Governor.”
What’s strange about that is that I filed the request in August of last year, and wrote about my request in the LA Times last November.
It’s taken so long that my work on the two projects for which I requested access – a magazine profile of Brown in the American Prospect (published last fall [LINK:https://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=see_jerry_run_again]) and a book on California’s governance troubles (California Crackup, due from the University of California Press this summer) – is complete.
I still intend to spend some time in the records, very soon, for future projects. Why not now? There is another brief delay because the archival collections at USC, including the Brown papers, are being inventoried, which means the papers are not in their usual place. I’ll let readers know when I gain access.