Governor Keeps Lid on Records about China Pact

Posted by Terry Francke, General Counsel | May 17, 2010 | Legal Issue: Public Information | 0 |

PUBLIC INFORMATION — Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's office has refused to release any documents related to a "first-of-its-kind" subnational
energy agreement between California and Jiangsu Province in China, reports blogger Jim Rothstein in Santa Cruz Green Watch.

The October 2009 agreement
calls for several California regulatory agencies (Cal EPA, the Air Resources Board , the California Energy Commission,and the California Public Utilities Commission), on behalf of the state, to cooperate with their
Jiangsu counterparts in several areas of energy efficiency, policy,
energy standards, reducing GHG emissions, technology, etc.

Jiangsu
Province is immediately adjacent to Shanghai and has emerged as a
industrial giant, including laptop, semiconductor and now solar
manufacturing. GE, for example, recently announced it is developing a smart grid
demonstration center in Jiangsu. Numerous California officials and several
private groups related to energy cooperation have traveled to Jiangsu before and since the agreement was signed.

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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