A Fighter for Open Government in California – CalAware

Editor's note: As a partner in "Sunshine Week," a national initiative promoting open government and freedom of information, we at Patch are publishing the column below by Terry Francke, general counsel for CalAware, on how his organization can aid public access to government information. At the bottom of the article, we have links to information on election funding and open-government laws in California.

How CalAware Can Help You Keep Your Government Open

Californians Aware (CalAware) is a statewide nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded eight years ago to “help citizens, officials and journalists keep Californians aware of public issues, by supporting and defending open government, an inquiring press, and a citizenry free to exchange facts and opinions.” Or as one Patch editor put it a few days ago, “CalAware advocates, educates—and litigates—in the interest of open government."

Audits

We do anonymous testing of government agencies in Sacramento and statewide to gauge and report on their awareness of and compliance with public records access law, assigning letter grades for their performance and including testers’ experiences in their own words.

Training

We provide workshops for—among others—public officials, employees and employee organizations on the laws requiring open government and compliance issues they need to be aware of. For example, we’re presenting a free webinar today, Tuesday, on recent legislation, litigation and “flashpoints” where practices flirt with liability.

Legislation

We sponsor bills like the current SB 1336 (Yee), which would assure anonymity for whistleblowers and persons interviewed in investigations of alleged improper governmental activities, but also require disclosure of the investigative findings, of those found responsible for serious problems, and of what if any discipline was imposed on them.

Sunshine Ordinances

We also support improved transparency legislation at the local level—Sunshine Ordinances filling gaps or removing obstacles to access in the Brown Act or the Public Records Act—that can be either adopted by local government bodies voluntarily or passed by citizen ballot initiatives if local officials are not cooperative.  Currently, for example, we have helped develop such measures headed for the November 2012 ballot in the cities of Dixon and Berkeley.

Publications

We publish the most comprehensive guides to the open meetings and public records laws that are available. Both can be ordered from Amazon, and an ebook version of the records guide is available for Kindle users there, as well as for iPad and other tablet users in the iTunes store book section.
Patch readers can also contact us for a free pamphlet, the Bell-Proofer’s Investigative Checklist, which shows how to decode and use the Brown Act and Public Records Act to best advantage to prevent City of Bell-type corruption. At a minimum it will help you stay on top of what’s really happening at city hall, county HQ or a wide variety of district offices by knowing what to watch for in government meetings, what information to ask for and what responses not to accept at face value.

Personal Help

If you have a question about the sunshine laws or a concern they’re being flouted, a call to us at (916) 487-7000 or an email to terry@calaware.org will get you an answer, and sometimes more.  About once a week or so we send a demand letter, often prompted by a contact from a citizen, journalist or even public official or employee, cautioning a government agency about its apparent failure to follow a sunshine law, and warning that unless the practice is corrected we are likely to sue.

Litigation

If the demand letter fails to persuade, we increasingly go to court for at least an order that the agency comply with the law, if not a nullification of action taken.  We have recently sued (and are settling with) the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, which reversed a controversial action it had taken, without adequate agenda notice, to cut “red tape” in the regulation of land development. We have also filed a Brown Act lawsuit against the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors for their misuse of a closed session to confer with Governor Jerry Brown.  Earlier litigation forced a community college district to reduce its public records copy fees, and since then all we’ve had to do is send others a demand letter.

About Sunshine Week

This year Sunshine Week is co-sponsored by ASNE (American Society of Newspaper Editors), Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press and many other media industry partners, including Patch.

In California there are two acts that provide open access to public meetings, The Brown Act and The Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act.  We also have the California Public Records Act that gives citizens access to all kinds of public information that is useful to communities.

The Center for Responsive Politics website (opensecrets.org) offers an excellent one-stop shop for financial information about national elections and candidates. A single page contains the latest campaign fundraising tally for all congressional races in California. Information for every state can be found by using the drop down menu. The most current information on candidates and fundraising can be found at the Federal Election Commission website by clicking on a state, then a district. Note the data on opensecrets.org is updated only quarterly.