OC Register: What local government does, the state legislature ignores

What’s public at city hall is secret in Sacramento

by BRIAN JOSEPH, Sacramento Correspondent

The Orange County Register
August 15th, 2011, 12:00 pm

When it comes to secrecy in California, turnabout isn’t fair play.

Assembly Speaker John A. Perez has made headlines this year with his proposal to dissolve the tiny (and scandal-plagued) city of Vernon. The speaker says the city, which has roughly 1,800 businesses but less than 100 residents, doesn’t have an independent electorate and doesn’t operate transparently. He’s introduced Assembly Bill 46 to strip Vernon of its cityhood and absorb it into Los Angeles County.

As part of his anti-Vernon campaign, the speaker requested a massive cache of documents from the city, dating back to 1980. The amount of records Perez requested is so large the city wanted a $200,000 deposit on the copy costs, but Vernon is complying with the request. In all, the city is providing the speaker with some 2 million pages of records, said city spokesman Fred MacFarlane.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Peter J. Corselli, engineering manager of the Vernon-based US Growers Cold Storage, has been fighting the speaker’s plan to decertify the city. Back in April, Corselli filed a records request with the speaker’s office, seeking documents pertaining to the speaker’s proposal, how much staff time has been devoted to it, etc.

Corselli’s request was almost completely denied by the Assembly Rules Committee.

This is common under state law. Records that are open to the public at the city level are often secret in the Legislature.

Among many other things, the speaker’s office requested communications between city officials. There is nothing in state law that makes such information secret.  (Although an overly aggressively record clerk might try to withhold it.) Corselli asked for the speaker’s correspondence about the city. State law specifically says that is secret information at the legislative level.

There’s a difference because the Legislature long ago exempted itself from the state’s Public Records Act. Indeed, most public agencies at every level of government — city, county, state — must abide by the Public Records Act, with the notable exception of the State Legislature. The Legislature conforms with the Legislative Open Records Act, a separate piece of law that features far more exemptions than the Public Records Act.

The Legislature also isn’t bound by the state’s opening meetings law, the Brown Act, which prohibits a majority of the members of, say, a city council from meeting in behind close doors. There’s no similar prohibition for state lawmakers. They meet in secret all the time in Sacramento. In fact, there’s a term for it at the Capitol: It’s called having a caucus.

If you haven’t had a chance, check out the Orange County Register’s recent report on state secrecy. It details several official state secrets, including the schedules of state lawmakers.