Another California City Allowed Police To Destroy Misconduct Records Ahead Of New Transparency Law

from the thanks-for-the-help,-assholes dept

California law enforcement agencies knew the reckoning was coming. A new law took effect at the beginning of this year, opening up records of police misconduct and use of force to the public for the first time. Some decided to engage in preemptive legal challenges. Some quietly complied. Some decided to ignore the law's author and pretend it didn't apply to any record created before 2019.

A couple of law enforcement agencies got really proactive and just started destroying records before the public could get its hands on them. The Inglewood PD got the green light from the city government to destroy hundreds of records subject to the new transparency law. The city and the PD claimed this was just regular, periodic housecleaning. But the timing seemed ultra-suspicious, given that it happened only days before the law took effect. Not that it matters. The records are gone and all the bad press in the world isn't going to bring them back.

KQED brings us some more bad press targeting a police department. And, again, it's not going to unshred the destroyed records. But it is important to call out the hugely disingenuous actions of the Fremont Police Department, which chose to greet the impending transparency with a final blast of opacity.

Last year, while state lawmakers were considering a landmark bill to open up previously confidential police misconduct records to the public, the city of Fremont quietly destroyed a large archive of papers, cassettes and computer files documenting over four decades of internal affairs investigations and citizen complaints. It is not known if the destroyed records covered officer-involved shootings.

Last fall, Fremont’s City Council also changed the Police Department’s records retention policy, reducing the amount of time that investigative files of officer-involved shootings must be saved from 25 years to 10.

Proving this resistance to transparency is not just a Fremont PD thing, the city has refused to comment on its approval of this bullshit move. The purge began almost as soon as the law was passed. The bill headed for the governor's desk last August. Governor Jerry Brown signed it into law in September. As soon as it became clear the bill had a good chance of becoming law, the Fremont PD began destroying years of misconduct records it apparently felt were worth retaining right up until the point the public had a chance to obtain them.

Between June and December 2018, Fremont destroyed six batches of records covering investigations of police misconduct, citizen complaints and disciplinary files spanning 1971 to 2016.

KQED discovered this mass memory-holing by filing a public records request for the list of documents considered responsive to requests under the new law. The long list of destroyed files includes records of two-year investigation that resulted in eleven orders to impose discipline on a single officer and 32 years of Internal Affairs files. It also includes 12 years of files related to officer-involved shootings.

And it did this all with the city's help. Last year, the council granted the police department's request to change its retention guidelines, ensuring that fewer documents will be retained and, eventually, handed over to the public.

It's one thing when a police department acts in its own self-interest by purging records that make it look less than stellar. It's quite another when a city government helps the PD fuck the public out of what now rightfully belongs to them.

Filed Under: california, transparency

Cohen Payment Kerfuffle Forces AT&T To Be Slightly More Transparent About Lobbying

from the sunlight-is-the-best-disinfectant dept

Though it kind of flew under the radar given countless other scandals, you might recall how Trump fixer and former lawyer Michael Cohen was also busted selling access to the President. One of the companies involved in this particular aspect of Cohen's grift was AT&T, which was found to have doled out $600,000 to Cohen, presumably under the belief that it would gain additional access and influence.

AT&T's received more than a few favors in the Trump administration since, including an FCC willing to self-immolate on lobbyist demand, and the death of both broadband privacy and net neutrality rules at the agency. Not to mention the Trump tax cuts, which netted AT&T more than $20 billion up front, and at least $3 billion in savings annually in perpetuity. And while the Trump DOJ did sue to thwart the AT&T Time Warner merger, that may have had more to do with Trump's close ties to Rupert Murdoch -- and Trump's disdain for CNN -- than any animosity toward AT&T.

Aside from AT&T throwing top policy man Bob Quinn under the bus for behavior AT&T has engaged in for years, AT&T saw little to nothing in the form of accountability. Amusingly, the little accountability they did witness came courtesy of AT&T's own investors. After the Cohen fiasco highlighted the secretive costs of AT&T's influence machine, some investors pushed AT&T for more transparency. The company recently responded by providing marginally more insight into the vast network of groups and organizations AT&T routinely pays to support its (usually anticompetitive and anti-consumer) policies:

"For the first time, AT&T is divulging some contributions to outside groups that keep their donors secret, providing a fuller, if still incomplete, picture of the Dallas-based telecom giant's vast spending on state and federal politics. A new report released by the company details payments totaling about $4.2 million to industry groups and think tanks that was used for lobbying during a portion of last year.

...The disclosure is the product of a years-long shareholder campaign and allows AT&T to avoid a proxy fight at its April 26 annual shareholder meeting. For the past five years, AT&T had advised investors to vote against nonbinding proposals asking for a report on lobby payments to outside groups.

Even with this slightly more transparent filing, AT&T's payment to Cohen (or the subsequent Barcelona meeting AT&T had with Ajit Pai pre-appointment) would still not have been voluntarily disclosed. That said, it's worth noting that AT&T's report on lobbying expenditures for the first half of 2018 reveal AT&T's funding of several of the telecom-industry-backed lobbying and policy organizations currently under law enforcement scrutiny for their role in those fake net neutrality comments that plagued the net neutrality repeal:

"In a recently released report covering the first six months of 2018, AT&T includes payments used for lobbying to more than 40 outside groups, including two — Broadband for America and the Taxpayer Protection Alliance — that have been subpoenaed by the New York attorney general as part of an ongoing investigation into millions of fake public comments on the FCC's net neutrality proposal."

Granted this is still just a drop in the bucket. As the attacks on net neutrality made pretty clear, AT&T has mastered the dark lobbying art of creating illusory support for what's usually unpopular policy using an ocean of co-opted groups and financially conflicted former and current politicians, happy to parrot AT&T missives in Tweets, editorials, and PR campaigns with nary a financial disclosure. AT&T's lobbyists routinely fail to register as lobbyists, and many telecom sector lobbyists skirt lobbying disclosure rules by simply... pretending they do something else.

That said, while American lobbying and disclosure guidelines are still the legal equivalent of damp cardboard, it's nice to see that the Cohen kerfuffle at least forced AT&T to be more transparent, however marginally.

Filed Under: lobbying, michael cohen, transparency
Companies: at&t

Second California Appeals Court Refuses To Review Police Unions' Challenge Of State Public Records Law

from the best-part-of-bashing-your-head-against-the-wall-is-when-you-stop dept

California law enforcement's losing streak continues. Since the new state law went into effect at the beginning of the year, California police unions have been battling the new transparency, claiming the public records law does not apply to historical records of police misconduct or use of force.

So far, the unions are finding no one who agrees with them. The law's author says the law is retroactive. So have a couple of state courts. The only person siding with unions on the retroactivity issue is the state's top cop, Attorney General Xavier Becerra.

The state's Supreme Court has turned down two requests by law enforcement unions to step in and clear up the retroactivity question. In both cases, it rejected the petition without comment. Now, a second state appellate court has refused to review a lower level decision finding the state's new law applies to old misconduct records.

Appellate judges found no reason to consider that Superior Court Judge Charles Treat's Feb. 8 decision that the state's new police transparency law, Senate Bill 1421, covered past years would be overturned on appeal and declined to hear the case. A stay on the release of records will end on March 19 unless the unions appeal to the state Supreme Court.

The unions will undoubtedly appeal. But it likely won't make any difference. The two rejections by the state Supreme Court include a petition by one of the state's sheriff's unions, which filed its petition right after the state court lifted the temporary injunction. This rejection, however, came with a comment from the appeals court -- one that indicates this will all end in tears (and released records).

"For the reasons stated by the trial court, appellants' argument is without merit," the court's order says.

The argument unions are pushing is a non-starter. At best, it's just delaying the inevitable. And the stance the state's unions are taking isn't even directly aligned with the departments whose employees they represent. Some law enforcement agencies are already turning over documents to records requesters without making them jump through litigation hoops or wait for a final call from the state's top court.

Sooner or later, the inevitable conclusion will arrive. And then agencies can get back to their usual stonewalling and foot-dragging. No matter what the courts decide on the retroactivity issue, it's still going to take some form of litigation to pry these records loose.

Filed Under: california, police, police misconduct, police unions, public records, transparency

FCC (Read: Taxpayers) Forced To Pay Journalist's Legal Bills After Tap Dancing Around FOIA Requests

from the nothing-to-see-here dept

You may or may not remember that FCC boss Ajit Pai promised to operate the "most transparent" FCC ever. Initially, Pai lived up to that promise by changing FCC policy so that FCC orders would be released before they were voted on; a pretty obvious improvement of benefit to both consumers and ISP lobbyists alike. But in the year or two since, Pai has shown that genuine transparency is the very least of the chairman's priorities.

For example, Pai's FCC has actively refused to aid law enforcement inquiries into who was behind the millions of bogus comments that polluted the net neutrality repeal public comment period. Similarly, the Pai FCC's general response to FOIA requests has been to stall, delay, and ignore said requests whenever possible, resulting in numerous lawsuits by media outlets attempting to get to the bottom of all manner of bizarre FCC policy decisions (like that fake DDOS attack emails show they made up to try and downplay public anger over the net neutrality repeal).

One of those lawsuits was filed by journalist Jason Prechtel, whose analysis recently helped shed some light on the telecom and Trump-linked organizations who stuffed the FCC ballot box during the net neutrality public comment period -- in some cases using stolen identities. The Pai FCC repeatedly ignored or stalled in response to Prechtel's FOIA requests regarding this data, so he sued the agency back in 2017. Last week, a court ruled that the FCC (read: taxpayers) will be forced to reimburse Prechtel's legal costs to the tune of $43,000.

As Gizmodo notes, it was probably money well spent if integrity and transparency actually matter to you:

"The data Prechtel ultimately obtained through the case formed the basis of a Gizmodo report last month—which he coauthored—that revealed how investigators had linked various entities, including a prominent Washington, D.C., publication, to potentially millions of fraudulent comments submitted during the 2017 net neutrality rollback.

The same data was previously withheld from law enforcement investigators by the FCC’s top lawyer citing jurisdictional and privacy concerns. Prechtel eventually obtained it under FOIA from a separate agency."

The settlement formally settles the dispute, though the FCC denies any wrongdoing. Still, numerous state AGs, the GAO, and the FBI are all investigating those bogus comments filed during the net neutrality repeal, and have subpoenaed several of the ISP-linked organizations Prechtel's data helped identify as the culprits. As such, this singular FOIA dispute is just one small part of a much larger, weirder story that still hasn't been fully told.

Filed Under: ajit pai, comments, fcc, foia, jason prechtel, net neutrality, transparency

PACER, Or Your First Amendment Right To Go Fuck Yourself For $0.10/Page

from the clunky,-inadequate-lie dept

Anyone who's used the US Court system's PACER system has complained about it. Some of those complaints have formed the basis of lawsuits. The multitude of complaints has moved legislators to make periodic runs at eliminating PACER's paywall. So far, PACER -- which looks and feels like it's still 2001 -- has managed to outlast these efforts. The only change over the last nineteen years has been an increase in access fees.

Many have complained, but few have complained as eloquently as Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of George Washington University's Program on Extremism. His op-ed for Politico is definitely worth reading. It highlights everything wrong with the PACER system, including its amazing profitability.

The U.S. federal court system rakes in about $145 million annually to grant access to records that, by all rights, belong to the public. For such an exorbitant price—it can cost hundreds of dollars a year to keep up with an ongoing criminal case—you might think the courts would at least make it easy to access basic documents. But you’d be wrong. The millions of dollars the courts have reaped in user fees have produced a website unworthy of the least talented of Silicon Valley garage programmers; 18 years since its online birth, PACER remains a byzantine and antiquated online repository of legal information.

This money is supposed to be used to improve PACER and fund other US Courts' efforts. A visit to PACER makes it clear none of that money is being routed towards making PACER less awful. At least one federal court has ruled the way the US Courts spend this money is illegal. But that determination hasn't stopped the court system from collecting fees and spending them on things like new TV screens in courthouses.

While it is a definite improvement over traveling to the pertinent court and using a kiosk to access electronic documents -- the way it was done from 1988-2001 -- the entire system is user-unfriendly and stupid expensive. The $0.10/page fee applies not only to documents, but to search results. Given the lack of standardization of case titles, searches are both expensive and frustrating. The fees apply whether or not the search turns up anything users are searching for.

And the per page fees for PDFs is simply ridiculous. These pages aren't being run off a Xerox by a court clerk. They're being served up from an infinite supply of 1s and 0s. Given their digital state, how does it possibly make sense to charge more for longer documents? The answer doesn't matter because it's the only game in town.

Adding to the problem is the court system's housecleaning efforts and the way it reacts to publication of public documents. In 2014, multiple appeals courts deleted "old" cases from their databases, memory-holing thousands of documents and decisions -- some only a couple of years old at that point. But what's more worrying is the way courts have responded to journalists publishing documents.

In January, I found a search warrant related to a wide-ranging investigation into public corruption in the Los Angeles City Council. When I made my discovery public, the Central District of California essentially locked down all search warrants filed on PACER. Most, if not all, search warrants recently filed in the district are no longer accessible online.

Presumably the DOJ and other law enforcement agencies did some loud complaining about the public court systems' publicly-accessible documents ending up in the hands of the public, resulting in a presumption of secrecy when it comes to affidavits and warrants.

More ends up hidden from public view -- not due to malice, but due to bureaucratic indifference. Hughes points out he has come across several terrorism prosecutions by the DOJ that have never been publicly announced by the Justice Department. The average member of the American public is not going to spend hundreds of dollars a month trying to track down documents from terrorism cases, so it's up the DOJ to provide timely notice of its anti-terrorism efforts. The DOJ is failing to do so and we only know this because dedicated private parties are willing to subject themselves to PACER's UI and inadequate search system to publicize the stuff the government can't be bothered to announce.

This all adds up to the worst system money can buy. It's broken. It's a joke. And it's the only access we the people have to documents the government has declared we have a First Amendment right to access. It's ugly, it's counterintuitive, and it somehow manages to personify the begrudging spirit of the most jaded bureaucrat, despite it being entirely composed of barely-functional code.

Filed Under: access, access to law, pacer, transparency, us courts

California Supreme Court Rejects Second Attempt By Cops To Jump The Judicial Queue Over Police Misconduct Records

from the back-of-the-line,-buddy dept

California cops hoping to hide their past misdeeds from the public are going to have to get by without the help of the state's highest court. A new law went into effect January 1st, opening up police misconduct records to the public for the first time in the state's history.

With few exceptions, law enforcement's response has been to pretend the law's reach doesn't extend retroactively. This runs contrary to the intent of the law as clarified directly to the courts and the state attorney general's office by the law's author, Senator Nancy Skinner.

Several lawsuits have been filed -- some by records requesters and some by law enforcement agencies. Both are seeking a declaration from the courts that their side is the right side. So far, two state courts have sided with requesters, stating that the law is retroactive.

Just after the law took effect, the Sheriff's Employees' Benefit Association petitioned the state supreme court directly, asking for a ruling on the law's reach. This request was denied by the court without comment, suggesting the state's top court was happy to let the lower courts handle this determination.

For a second time, the state supreme court has rejected a premature examination of the law. Scott Shackford at Reason has more details:

After a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled against unions for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles Police Department, one union asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in. On Wednesday, the high court declined, leaving in place the lower court's decision.

The court rejected this request without comment, wordlessly reiterating its stance on the issue: let the court system do its work and stop trying to jump the turnstile. The next step for disappointed fans of opacity are the states' appeals courts, not the one at the top of the judicial food chain.

From what we've seen so far, it seems unlikely the uniformed anti-transparency activists will prevail. The two courts to return rulings have stated the law affects pre-2019 police misconduct records. The state attorney general's deliberate obtuseness hasn't budged the judicial needle. Eventually -- but hopefully sooner than later -- public records requesters will have a clear answer and complete access to records detailing the impropriety and abuse their tax dollars have paid for.

Filed Under: california, police misconduct, police records, transparency

Trump Administration Rolls Back Obama's Last-Minute Drone Strike Reporting Requirements

from the public-is-purchasing-civilian-deaths-and-the-gov't-won't-even-give-it-a dept

After years of increasing overseas drone strikes, the Obama administration briefly attempted to salvage its reputation. Having turned countries like Syria and Yemen into the Killingest Places on Earth, Obama drafted a few rules to rein in the use of drones. A charitable take was that he recognized the blowback caused by these strikes, which tended to result in the unintended killing of civilians. A less charitable take is he recognized he might be turning these powers over to the Republicans and wanted to tie them up with restrictions he would have never placed on his own administration.

One of the few positive steps Obama took was mandating periodic reporting on drone strikes to assess the amount of collateral damage caused by these attacks, presumably in hopes of further reducing civilian casualties. Obama's executive order instituted yearly reporting that would (eventually) be passed on to the public.

Report on Strikes Undertaken by the U.S. Government Against Terrorist Targets Outside Areas of Active Hostilities. (a) The Director of National Intelligence (DNI), or such other official as the President may designate, shall obtain from relevant agencies information about the number of strikes undertaken by the U.S. Government against terrorist targets outside areas of active hostilities from January 1, 2016, through December 31, 2016, as well as assessments of combatant and non-combatant deaths resulting from those strikes, and publicly release an unclassified summary of such information no later than May 1, 2017. By May 1 of each subsequent year, as consistent with the need to protect sources and methods, the DNI shall publicly release a report with the same information for the preceding calendar year.

The problem with instituting policies via executive orders is they can be undone using the same process. It appears the Trump Administration isn't willing to abide by the rules the previous administration left for it to deal. Trump's executive order rescinds Obama's directive, allowing this administration to operate with the same opacity the previous administration enjoyed for its duration.

And we can't even say Obama's reporting requirement was great while it lasted. It went into force July 1, 2016. By the time the first reporting period rolled around in 2018, a different president was in office. As Charlie Savage points out for the New York Times, the new order simply codifies this administration's failure to publish the first required report.

Mr. Trump’s revocation of the disclosure rule amounted to a belated acknowledgment that his administration had already changed the Obama policy in practice: The director of national intelligence never put out a report about bystander casualties in 2017, even though the Obama-era order requiring one remained on the books last year, when the report was due out.

Trump's order claims the reporting is redundant as there are other drone strike reports already mandated by law. But this revocation gives the CIA -- an agency that has "acquired a taste" for deadly drone strikes -- complete opacity. The reporting requirements left untouched by Trump's order only affects Defense Department drone operations. The CIA's operations -- often carried out away from areas declared war zones by the US government -- will continue to operate under the radar, safely shielded from the eyes of the public.

We don't know if the CIA's use of drone strikes has kept pace with the DoD's escalation. And we may never find out. But one thing's for certain: the Trump Administration will be deploying far more drone strikes than the drone-happy Obama Administration. This can be gleaned by the few strike numbers that have been made public by the Defense Department, as collated here by Steve Niva, the editor of the Middle East Report.

Trump promised during the campaign to “bomb the shit” out of ISIS and it appears to be one of the few promises he has kept. Trump inherited from Obama an escalating war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but both conventional bombing and drone strikes have significantly increased under Trump as a result of his new ISIS battle plan, whose strategy Defense Secretary James Mattis defines as “annihilation tactics.”

[...]

[I]n the past three years, the number of military drone strikes there has also climbed, from 304 in 2015, to 376 last year, to 362 through the first eight months of Trump’s presidency. At this pace, 2017 will exceed previous yearly tallies.

Increasing deployments while decreasing transparency: that's the Presidential way. It worked for Obama for all eight years he was in office. On the way out the door, he made a futile gesture in response to an escalation in civilian deaths -- one ignored by the CIA and now granted an executive erasure by the new boss. We, as a nation, kill people based on metadata. And no one at the top feels obligated to hand over any data at all on these killings to the public that's funding these deaths.

Filed Under: barack obama, donald trump, drone strikes, drones, executive orders, transparency

California Attorney General Doubles Down On Threatening Journalists For Possessing Convicted Cops List

from the I-guess-the-Constitution-only-protects-bad-cops dept

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has decided there's too much First Amendment in his state. First, he ignored clarification provided directly to him by the author of the state's new public records law to declare past police misconduct records off limits. Claiming the question of retroactivity was still open, Becerra denied public records requests seeking documents created prior to January 1, 2019.

His next potshot at the First Amendment occurred shortly thereafter. Journalists from UC Berkeley received a list of convicted California police officers in response to a records request. The list covered 10 years of convictions and contained 12,000 names. At this point, the journalists have not published the full list. But they have been vetting the list to prep for publication.

That's where AG Becerra stepped in. He told the journalists it was illegal for them to possess "confidential information" they obtained lawfully through a public records request. He's wrong, of course. It is not illegal to possess documents received via public records requests even if the government entity has mistakenly sent you the wrong documents.

As for the "confidential" claim, any convictions would already be public records, seeing as prosecutions are handled by the state's court system. What the list does is provide one-stop shopping for bad cops, which is what law enforcement agencies are doing when they run applicants against this list.

So far, only three officers' names have been published. AG Becerra is trying to ensure those three names are the only ones the public will ever see. If the First Amendment needs to be damaged to protect bad cops, that's a sacrifice he's willing to make.

In a statement provided to Freedom of the Press Foundation on Wednesday, a spokesman for the California Department of Justice doubled down on the contention that the journalists are breaking the law:

“The UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program is not an entity permitted to possess or use this confidential data. The UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program chose to publish the confidential information of Californians despite being alerted by the Department of Justice that doing so was prohibited by law.”

The AG's office is still threatening the reporters with criminal charges simply for possessing the list. But even if the journalists publish the list in full, it's unlikely any court will support Becerra's decision to pretend the First Amendment doesn't exist. Both the act of requesting public records and the publication of obtained records are protected speech. AG Becerra has nothing to work with here, but he's publicly demonstrating his willingness to do whatever it takes to protect the state's bad cops.

Worse, he's doubled down. When AG Becerra was asked for clarification by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, he had this to say:

“We always strive to balance the public’s right to know, the need to be transparent and an individual’s right to privacy. In this case, information from a database that’s required by law to be confidential was released erroneously, jeopardizing personal data of individuals across our state. No one wants to shield criminal behavior; we’re subject to the rule of law.”

If Becerra has a problem with "jeopardizing personal data," the only action he should be taking is against the government entity that (supposedly) breached the law by releasing it to reporters. Becerra's nod to "rule of law" is especially rich. The Constitution is part of the "law" Becerra professes allegiance to. But it's clear he'd rather cover up for his cop buddies than respect the parts of the law that restrain his ability to punish people for protected speech.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, california, foia, journalism, police misconduct, public records, reporting, transparency, xavier becerra

California Legislators Want To Make It More Difficult For Records Requesters To Get Documents From The Government

from the mandated-chain-yanking dept

The California legislature handed the public a win by making police misconduct records obtainable through records requests. The transparency very few law enforcement agencies are welcoming is still being litigated, but going forward it seems clear cops will no longer be able to hide their misconduct behind a wall of government-enabled opacity.

I guess California legislators believe some sort of transparency equilibrium must be maintained. They've introduced a bill that will make it more difficult for requesters to obtain documents. (via Dave Maass) The bill amends the state's public records law to create another hoop for requesters to jump through before they can get a hold of documents the law says are rightfully theirs.

Here's the key amendment:

Before instituting any proceeding for injunctive or declarative relief or writ of mandate in any court or competent jurisdiction, the person shall meet and confer in good faith with the agency in an attempt to informally resolve each issue. The person or their attorney shall file a declaration stating that this meet and confer process has occurred at the time that proceedings are instituted.

This may seem like a minimal imposition, but it really isn't. Only a small percentage of public records requesters live close to the agencies they're seeking to obtain documents from. Even if they are nearby, the law allows agencies to set the agenda. Agencies take as long as they want to set up a meeting, pushing rejected requests past the law's upper limits for responses.

Even if agencies allow these conferences to happen by phone, requesters are still at the mercy of agencies that are in no hurry to return responses. This is just another way for agencies to stonewall requesters in hopes of deterring them from following through on their requests.

The litigation option is being delayed for no discernible purpose. Few things motivate recalcitrant government agencies like lawsuits. This is a gift to uncooperative agencies, presented as a common sense solution to the costs of litigation. Sure, in a perfect world, these discussions could head off pricey lawsuits. But the world we actually live in requires litigation a great deal of the time because few government agencies are truly responsive to records requesters.

And it's all going to end up in court anyway. The court will now have to rule first on whether a good faith effort was made prior to the filing, which will result in more expenses incurred by both parties as they attempt to persuade a judge an attempt was or wasn't made by one party. There's nothing in the law that punishes agencies for screwing around with requesters and no time limit is placed on the mandated meetings.

Hopefully, this new requirement will never make its way into law. If it does, it should be challenged immediately on the grounds that it violates rights guaranteed by the state. If state legislators are truly concerned about the ever-escalating cost of public records litigation, they should focus their time and energy cracking down on agencies with track records of unresponsiveness, rather than just make it more difficult to force records out of these agencies' hands.

Filed Under: california, public records, transparency