Open Government
Who Pays for His Travel A secretive nonprofit funded by some of the state’s richest businessmen has spent more than $1.6 million for chartered jets, luxury hotels and private motorcades to ferry Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and aides around Asia, Europe and Mexico in the name of promoting California trade, reports the Associated Press. The expenditures, says the report, some dating back to Schwarzenegger’s first full year in office in 2004haven’t been broken down until now because the nonprofit and the governor’s office decided to stop classifying the expenses as gifts to the governor. That move kept the bills off standard conflict-of-interest reports reviewed by journalists.
How They Spent Their Day The Sunlight Foundation has launched an online map display of how a handful of cooperating members of Congress who publish their schedules on the Internet spend at least part of their days in meetings with selected constituents and others. So far the sole Californian cooperating is Rep. John Doolittle, (R-4th District, in the northeast corner of the state) who for example met on December 5 with the CEO of Blackwater USA.
Who Gets What Funding The new USASpending.gov site, the product of a long Congressional struggle, allows users to search by (unclassified) contracts and grants, contractor names, congressional districts and lawmakers. The data can be easily downloaded and used. A "wiki" function gives users a chance to suggest changes and add information. Charts and rankings show to whom and where the bulk of federal dollars go.
Google Wants Gov It soon may be easier to google your government. But Wikipedia-style collaboration and information-sharing by government officials and citizens probably will take some time. Those conclusions emerged from a Senate hearing last week in which efforts to make basic public information more accessible and searchable online got a boost from open-government advocates, Google and several senators on the Homeland Security Committee.
A New Chief in Town Sacramento has just chosen a new police chief, Rick Braziel, who is committed, says City Manager Ray Kerridge, to make the department more transparent and accountable. Just in time.
Free Speech? ?
?Curb Appeal Curbed? The city of Napa has obtained a temporary restraining order against a frequent police critic who recently videotaped the homes of three officers for his public access TV show, releasing the addresses as well.
Costly Zero Tolerance The Napa Valley Unified School District will have to pay at least $95,000 in lawyers’ fees under a settlement with five families who sued the school over its dress code, which among other things outlawed socks bearing an image of the Milne/Disney character Tigger.
Terrorism Support Ban Too Vague The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down portions of a federal law that prohibits providing material support or resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, saying the law fails to specify what such conduct includes. A group of six organizations, including the Humanitarian Law Project headed by retired federal Administrative Law Judge Ralph Fertig of Los Angeles, challenged the law in 1998, complaining that their peaceful activities in support of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam could be construed as providing material support under the act. The plaintiffs wanted to offer legal expertise and training to the groups on the topics of negotiation and how to utilize humanitarian and international law to their benefit. They also sought to advocate politically on behalf of Kurds in Turkey and Tamils in Sri Lanka. The Ninth Circuit opinion in Humanitarian Law Project v. Mukasey noted that an ordinary person would not understand what was forbidden by the prohibitions on training and service, or by the prohibition on expert advice and assistance by way of other specialized knowledge, and also that the terms could still be read to include speech and advocacy protected by the First Amendment.
Whistleblowers?
Tales Out of School Public education, no more a hospitable career for those reporting fraud, waste or abuse than any other, finds two more examples in recent reports:
The distinguished dean of the UC San Francisco Medical School, Dr. David A. Kessler, was told last Thursday to clean out his office before the weekend, after calling for an audit of the schools finances after finding figures that didnt add up; and
The State Department of Education, having lost a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit detailing particularly brutal and corrupt misconduct and resulting in a jury verdict of liability to the tune of $4.5 million, then after appeal having lost the retrial to the tune of $7.6 million, is now apparently going to appeal a second time and seek a third trial, having spent about $1.3 million on outside lawyers to date. At stake is the reputation of former Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, which has suffered potentially severe damage in the litigation so far, and would have suffered more had the appellate opinion not been ordered unpublished and had the press paid the case more attention.
Open Meetings
Frail Friends More than a century ago Lord Alfred Douglas, later to be linked with Oscar Wildes downfall, wrote of the love that dare not speak its name. Now the ethos has altered wildly, and cities are submitting briefs as friends of the court supporting the legal challenge to Californias ban on gay marriage. But Sacramentos city council wants it both waysthe lawyers stepping forward boldly to argue for the right in court, but only after their clients, the elected council members, have mulled the pros and cons of such a move in the protective cover of a closed session on pending litigation. But the Brown Act limits the use of that species of closed session to situations where open discussion could prejudice the position of the city in a lawsuitnot a risk when its not even a party.
Public Officials Right to Know Two Irvine City Council members are questioning how a national search for a new chief executive at the Orange County Great Park last month yielded two top finalists with ties to City Hall, fueling an ongoing controversy over how leaders for the massive public works project are chosen.
Public Information
Secret Spending on Litigation The Ventura County Star is seeking a court order to force the Oxnard Union High School District and its insurer to turn over information about how much they’re spending to fight a lawsuit filed by a former employee. Court records show that the agencies’ attorney fees through May were at least $340,000. Encino lawyer Dennis Walsh says his law firm’s invoices to the district are exempt from California’s Public Records Act because they are "records pertaining to pending litigation."
FOIA Improvement Gains The U.S. Senate unanimously approved legislation Friday that would strengthen the much beleaguered Freedom of Information Act. The passage of the bill, sponsored by Senators Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, was seen as a breakthrough by the open government community. As summarized by Rebecca Carr of Cox Newspapers, the OPEN Government Act would:
restore meaningful deadlines for agency action under FOIA;
impose real consequences on federal agencies for missing FOIAs 20-day statutory deadline;
clarify that FOIA applies to government records held by outside private contractors;
establish a FOIA hotline service for all federal agencies; and
create a FOIA Ombudsman to provide FOIA requestors and federal agencies with a meaningful alternative to costly litigation.
An earlier attempt to overhaul the 41-year-old law has been stalled since August over disagreements between the House and Senate versions of the bill. But could California Congressman Henry Waxman, sponsor of the House version, still scuttle the legislation?
Scholar Barred from Bar Data A researcher who wants historical data on the background of applicants for the California bar exam to study the effects of affirmative action on law students was turned down last month when bar governors said they were obligated to protect the students privacy. The board of governors unanimously backed its Committee of Bar Examiners, which months ago rejected the request by UCLA law professor Richard Sander.
E-mail Preferred As Contact In response to the position taken by the San Francisco City Attorney that private e-mail addresses must be redacted when releasing city records because it would be disturbing for someone to receive a message at home, sunshine advocate Kimo Crossman notes, Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of executives prefer to receive email over other forms of communication, up from 34 percent a decade ago, according to a study conducted by OfficeTeam, a staffing service catering to administrative professionals.
Public Records Released Disclose . . .
A Glendora school maintenance employee who in 2003 poured toxic herbicide down a city drain was paid more than $100,000 this month after she sued the district, arguing her firing was unfair.
A $50,000 study by some of the states largest water agencies completed last summer estimates it would cost between $3.3 billion and $3.7 billion in 2006 dollars to build an unlined, 46-mile peripheral canal to divert water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and deliver it to thirsty customers to the south.
Free Press
Coparazzi Police on duty at traffic accident scenes have been known to get in the faces of news photographers or even seize their cameras, claiming to be protecting the privacy of the victims. That fact makes this incident especially awkward.
Statewide News Stand See every days front pages from many larger daily newspapers in California beginning with the fifth row down here.
