Assembly Committee Kills Sunshine Bills Sponsored by Newspapers

Posted by Terry Francke, General Counsel | Aug 25, 2011 | Legal Issue: Open Government | 0 |

The Assembly Appropriations Committee, not necessarily retaliating for a lawsuit by the Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee to open up the Assembly’s office budgeting records, but not necessarily not retaliating either, on Thursday derailed two bills sponsored by the California Newspaper Publishers Association and carried by Senator Leland Yee (D-Dan Francisco). SCA 7 would have allowed the state’s voters to place two fundamental parts of the Brown Act (posting meeting agendas and reporting actions taken in closed session) into the state constitution. SB 326 would have required the state’s courts to move toward a practice of providing access to the filed complaints in new civil and criminal actions on the same day received in the courthouse. In some counties this access can lag for days or weeks.

About The Editor

Terry Francke, General Counsel

Terry Francke has a 39-year history of helping journalists, citizens and public officials understand and use their First Amendment and open government rights. With CalAware, Francke has authored comprehensive and authoritative guidebooks to California law on access to government meetings and public records and the news gathering and publication rights of journalists. Focusing on these issues in public forum law, he supervises CalAware's legislative and litigation initiatives; conducts workshops on legal compliance; helps design public records audits; supports local sunshine ordinance drafting efforts; writes CalAware Today, a blog on current developments and proposals in the law and best practices; and answers countless queries by phone and e-mail from citizens, journalists, public officials and employees, and lawyers. Francke previously served 14 years as executive director and general counsel to the California First Amendment Coalition, after a 10-year post as legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. He has served as an advisory panel member to the National Center on Courts and the Media; taught journalism law at the Department of Communication at Stanford University; and served as an expert contributor to the 1994 major revisions to the Ralph M. Brown Act and the 2004 ballot proposition making open government a basic right of citizens under the California Constitution. Francke is a 1967 graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a 1979 graduate of McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. Prior to his legal career, Francke worked as a weekly newspaper editor and in military and local government public affairs positions.

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