During a week where lawmakers continued to hammer out details of a more than $350 billion state budget and made last-minute deals determining what propositions will be on California voters’ ballots in the fall, another fight brewed in the statehouse.
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This one was over government transparency, specifically public records.
At the core of it was a bill from Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco, D-Downey, that sought to make sweeping changes to how anyone could access government documents and data.
Assembly Bill 1821 initially would have changed California’s Public Records Act — a law in place since 1968 that requires government records to be disclosed to the public — to give officials more time to respond to records requests.
Specifically, Pacheco’s bill ups the time public agencies have to determine whether it has the records requested from 10 days after receiving a request from the public to 10 business days. And for special circumstances, it increases that time limit to 14 business days, instead of just 14 days.
A variety of First Amendment and legal organizations opposed the bill even in that form, but it still passed out of the Assembly in late May with some bipartisan support.
But recent changes to the bill — made ahead of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled for this week — led to a bit of a brouhaha in the legislature.
The bill would allow a government agency to petition a court if it believed a request for documents was made with “malicious intent.” If that was so determined, fees between $22.35 and $66.26 per hour for the search and review time of the requested records could be imposed.
It would also let government agencies determine if a request was made for “commercial use” and charge fees then.
Pacheco’s office ultimately stripped the amendments following the outcry last week.
Her office didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment about the intention behind those controversial additions. Nikki Johnson, Pacheco’s chief of staff, only said in an email that the bill will be amended back to the version that passed in the Assembly, which only tackled the length of time government agencies had to respond to records requests.
Still, David Snyder, the executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonpartisan outfit, called the attempt to push such a bill through the statehouse “deeply troubling.”
“This was a very serious attempt to seriously undermine the rights that all Californians have to see how their government operates,” said Snyder. “It would have done great damage to the Public Records Act and to transparency and accountability generally.”
“We were truly alarmed,” Snyder said, “and this organization is not one that runs around with its hair on fire a lot of the time.”
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Snyder said he was glad to see the latest amendments removed from the bill and acknowledged that he generally believes government agencies and officials “behave on the up and up” more likely than not.
Still, Snyder said, “democracy cannot function unless the people understand what their government is doing, and people can’t understand what their government is doing if they can’t get information from their government.”
“The Public Records Act is a key way for what’s happening with the government to get out to the public,” he added. “Without it, we’d largely be at the whims of government agencies to tell us what’s going on and what the facts are, and that’s a recipe for a collapse of democracy.”
Proponents of the bill, though, have argued that the original intent was to help agencies tackle large-scale requests with few staff, particularly when they don’t work on weekends or holidays.
“In recent years, public agencies have seen a significant increase in public records requests,” Pacheco, who represents La Habra in the Assembly, said in the bill analysis. “As digital communication has expanded, submitting requests — often in high volume — has become easier than ever. Some requests are unusually large or require substantial staff time to fulfill.”
“When a small number of requests consume a disproportionate share of resources, agencies can face challenges keeping up with all requests in a timely manner while still providing essential services,” Pacheco said.
When the bill passed the Assembly — this version only increased the length of time an agency had to respond to requests — it had the support of the California State Association of Counties, League of California Cities, California Municipal Clerks Association, Rural County Representatives of California and Urban Counties of California.
As for Orange County’s legislators, Assemblymembers Diane Dixon, R-Newport Beach; Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Irvine; Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton; and Avelino Valencia, D-Anaheim, along with Pacheco, voted in favor of the bill.
Assemblymembers Laurie Davies, R-Laguna Niguel; Kate Sanchez, R-Rancho Santa Margarita; and Tri Ta, R-Westminster voted against the bill.
Assemblymember Phillip Chen, R-Yorba Linda, did not vote.
The bill is scheduled to be heard in a crowded Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, June 30. It is chaired by Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana.
In other news:
• Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat whose district includes communities in southern Orange County, touted an effort to restrict the sale of nitrous oxide cans larger than 8 grams, with some industries (automotive, culinary, dental and medical) excluded. She was joined at a Friday news conference by Davies, the Laguna Niguel Republican Assembly member, and Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley.
“As the first county in California to ban nitrous oxide, families, schools, hospitals and law enforcement see the harm firsthand,” said Foley. “Local neurologists and pediatricians share stories of formerly strong individuals now struggling to stay in school as well as maintain employment and housing.”
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