Times: California public records law ‘eviscerated’ in budget bill, critics charge
— by Jeffrey Wisniewski — 19 June 2013 — 1 comment »
More than a decade of Cabral. Two years (and counting) of Tang. It now may become legal in California.
Thomas Peele and Josh Richman report:
Legislation tucked into the state budget bill would “eviscerate” the public’s ability to track tax dollars and hold local officials accountable, open government advocates charged Friday. [...]
Language inserted into a budget bill on Wednesday would allow local governments to turn down requests for records without citing a legal reason. It would no longer require government officials to respond to to records requests within 10 days or force them to help the public by describing what records exist. [...]
The proposed changes suggest local governments follow current law as a “best practice” but also allows them the option of ignoring transparency provisions by announcing annually that they will not follow them.
It also changes a major provision of the law about electronic records, stripping a requirement that governments release things like data bases and spreadsheets in the form they are kept, instead giving them the option of picking their own format, such as paper copies. [...]
Terry Francke, general counsel of the good government group Californian’s Aware, said the changes “cannot be justified by fiscal necessity; no one has provided any evidence of savings.” He accused Brown and legislative leaders of trying to sneak through a gutting of transparency requirements that would never pass otherwise.
The ACLU of Northern California also ripped the changes Friday. “Interfering with public access to public records will only shroud elected officials in more secrecy at a time when transparency is more crucial than ever before,” said its spokesman, Will Matthews.
Request your records while it’s still legal.
