In last-minute developments on Thursday, state lawmakers withdrew their plans to uphold damaging, last-minute riders included in the state budget last week that open government proponents said would have made the California Public Records Act unenforceable.
State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) released a joint statement Thursday in which they said they agreed “there needs to be both an immediate fix to ensure local entities comply with the California Public Records Act and a long term solution so the California Public Records Act is not considered a reimbursable mandate.”
Budget amendments added last week to SB 71 and AB 76 would have removed requirements for local agencies to comply with California Public Records Act requirements when responding to requests from the public and the media, as Lake County News has reported.
The riders would have ended requirements to respond within 10 days to public records act requests, assist requesters with framing their requests more effectively, providing documents in the requester’s preferred format, or even providing a reason or legal justification for denying requests, according to Californians Aware, one of the groups that fought the proposals.
The amendments would, in turn, have encouraged local agencies to follow the public records act’s provisions as best practices, and require any local agency to announce if it does not follow these best practices at its next regularly scheduled meeting and annually thereafter.
Stripping the requirements was proposed as a cost-saving measure, but legislators gave no specific figures about how much might be saved.
According to voting records, Assemblymember Mariko Yamada, who represents Lake County in the Assembly, voted for the final version of AB 76 with the Senate budget’s amendments – including the public records act provisions – last Friday, June 14.
On the same day in the state Senate, Sen. Noreen Evans – whose district includes Lake County – voted against SB 71, which she called “extremely problematic,” because she said the provisions included in it would make the California Public Records Act unenforceable.
“I do think that the public policy with respect to the California Public Records Act is an extremely important one and it affects not only the transparency of the operations of government but also the enforceability and ultimately the accountability of certain public agencies,” Evans said.
After Evans spoke in the Senate, Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) responded to concerns about the public records act changes, maintaining that the budget measures were meant to save the state “millions of dollars” in having to reimburse local jurisdictions from fulfilling such requests. He said the measures in the budget bill didn’t make such records unavailable.
However, journalists and open government activists across the state rallied against the proposed changes, arguing that trusting that government would simply do the right thing wasn’t a way to guarantee transparency, and that the 45-year-old law has been critical in keeping the operations of government open at all levels.
Pérez said Wednesday that the Assembly would take up the budget again and remove the provisions damaging to the California Public Records Act.
However, the same day Steinberg and Leno said the state Senate wouldn’t revisit the budget “unless there is evidence that locally-elected officials aren’t complying with the statutes that they were elected and expected to uphold,” they said in a statement.
They also planned to introduce a constitutional amendment to go before voters next June making changes to the California Public Records Act.
Gov. Jerry Brown signaled his support for the amendment plan in a separate statement.
On Thursday, Steinberg indicated that constitutional amendment was still on track, but said the Senate would take up the amended SB 71 passed by the Assembly earlier in the day that removed changes in the budget regarding the California Public Records Act.
The joint statement from Steinberg and Pérez said that as the Senate advances its proposed constitutional amendment, the Assembly will work with them throughout the process “to give voters the chance to make clear that good government shouldn’t come with an extra price tag.”
The updated version of the budget bill passed the Assembly on Thursday by a 54-25 vote, with Yamada supporting the new version of the bill.
The Senate is reportedly scheduled to take up the amended version of the budget bill next week.
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