A Superior Court judge in Sacramento has tentatively ruled that detailed spending records of individual California legislators are public records and must be disclosed.
Judge Timothy Frawley will conduct a hearing on the matter today. In a tentative ruling released Thursday night, he wrote that the budget documents sought by two newspapers “indisputably contain information relating to the conduct of the public’s business” and that the Legislative Open Records Act “reflects a strong presumption in favor of public access to legislative records,” the Sacramento Bee reported.
Read the full story here: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/02/4095000/feud-over-calif-assembly-records.html

In a new legal filing in defense of a lawsuit filed by two newspapers, the California legislture is claiming that detailed records of how lawmakers spend taxpayer money is not public record. Read mroe here: http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/11/09/41330.htm

A bank worker who was fired has claimed in a lawsuit that it was in retaliation for his questions and Facebook postings about the pay of a city manager who was close to his boss. This appalling action is detailed in a lawsuit filed in Riverside County Superior Court first reported by Courthouse News Service.
‘Mr. Libby must understand that such public discourse comes at a price,’ the suit claims Indian Wells city manager Greg Johnson emailed to supervisor of Hadden Libby, who was probing the $283,000 salary and lucrative benefits paid Johnson.
Those benefits include lifetime medical benefits and free rounds of golf at a local club and free car washes at taxpayer expense.
The allegations show a horrible arrogance and small-town secrecy that shows the need to regular people to continually confront local governments. Read the CNS story reposted on the Web site of Californians Aware here: http://bit.ly/t0k5vH

An unnamed business entity has filed a federal lawsuit in Maryland under seal as “company doe” against the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, claiming that a new public data base of safety complaints against products contains damaging and false information. According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, lawyers for the unnamed company claim the complaint within the data base is baseless and naming their client in court papers would bring about the type of harm they claim the data base is causing. The data base, which could be a good reporting tool, is saferproducts.gov; it contains information about deaths caused by every day consumer products.
The judge in the case has yet to rule on the request to proceed anonymously. The CPSC is attempting to unseal the case.
The U.S. Supreme Court, according to the reporters committee, has never ruled on the First Amendment right of access to civil courts, although that deeply accepted. Read more about this frightening issue for journalists at: http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=12193

The Peralta Community College District. based in Oakland, has a long history of secrecy. A story by Matt Krupnick of the Bay Area News Group shows it is continuing: the district censored thousands of emails of its elected trustees that Krupnick requested. Legal experts say most the censorship appears to be illegal. Read the story here: http://bit.ly/pjIujB

The Bay Area New Group newspapers went to court Monday to force the release of probation reports of three men with prior felony convictions charged in new killings. A judge said at least two of the reports will be released later this month.
Alameda Superior Court officials changed policies on access to the reports in August to require a formal motion to a judge for their release. The change came after a reporter asked for the documents. Unfettered access to previous probation reports when a person is charged with a new felony was part of a state law enacted in 1971.
The action taken by BANG on Monday addresses only the three requested reports, not the change in court policy, which is contradictory to state law. Read more here: http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_19135601

The Center for Governmental Studies in L.A., long a place where reporters went for help understanding California campaign finance reports and disclosure statements, is closing its doors, its president, Bob Stern, reported Thursday.
The center’s funding is depleted and it can no longer continue to operate, its leaders said in a statement. New contact information for Stern and other staffers and the full statement are available at www.cgs.org.

This James Rainey piece on Steve Jobs and the media is a must read:

Apple “has taken stances that, in my opinion, are outright hostile to the practice of journalism,” said (Dan) Gillmor, a former San Jose Mercury News journalist and founding director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship.

Read the whole story.

A bit of good news on search warrant information from the RCFP: “The public has a right to view materials filed in support of search warrant applications once an investigation is over, a federal appeals court recently held, adding that the right of access is infringed when the material is sealed because of general concerns that it may be posted online.” More at http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=12179

The opinion of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco (9th Cir.) answers a question left unresolved by an earlier Ninth Circuit ruling addressing public access to search warrant materials. In that 1989 case, Times Mirror Co. v. United States, the court refused to recognize a right of access to search warrants and related materials during an ongoing criminal investigation.

The editor of the student newspaper at a community college in Kansas is suing her school after administrators claimed she would have to pay $24,130.72 for a records request. “They’re basically hanging a price tag on what should be public documents in order to keep those documents from being public,” a lawyer for the student said. More here from the Student Press Law Center: http://www.splc.org/news/newsflash.asp?id=2281