Pass AB 469 to boost needed transparency

There's the federal Freedom of Information Act, and the state of California's Public Records Act — and then there's actual getting access to such information and such public records.

As us newshounds know, there are many times when the twain do not meet, when governments pay only lip service to the idea that what they have wrought must be accessible to the members of the citizenry they nominally serve.

And who certainly pay their salaries.

A case in point just last week for our newspaper group — and thus for our readers' right to know — came when staff writer Steve Scauzillo tried to find out why a particular light rail extension from Los Angeles County into the Inland Empire was denied funding, whereas other Southern Californian transit projects got the big bucks.

What were the required criteria to get the taxpayer funding, and why did the extension fail to make the grade?

These seem like reasonable questions for the press to ask in our quest to serve the public, and for government officials to answer.

When we and our lawyers sought the answer in a formal written request on Feb. 14 to the California State Transportation Agency seeking documents that explained the process, “the agency cited exemptions in the state public records law and did not provide information about the rail funding process,” as staff writer Steve Scauzillo reported last Saturday. “The request asked for documents explaining why 16 transit projects in the state were awarded $2.5 billion in grants for construction, while other applications submitted with high hopes were not funded.”

About the reasonable right to know, “There's no question there is compelling public interest here,” said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, a group that advocates for open government and the public's rights.

As CalMatters columnist Dan Walters reports, Assemblyman Vince Fong, the Bakersfield Republican, believes he has a way to make the Public Records Act work better. He has introduced a bill, AB 469, “that would create an ombudsman within the state auditor's office to settle such disagreements without involving judges. It's a concept that could make the PRA a user-friendlier law.”

Fong's proposal is very much backed by the California News Publishers Association — and by us.

“Government exists to serve the public,” Fong told our editorial board this week. “The government must be transparent and accountable to the people we serve. State agencies should not be able to abuse the PRA by denying public records requests by simply citing irrelevant PRA exemptions. This bill seeks to end this abuse by establishing a PRA ombudsperson to referee whether the PRA request is legitimate.”

After the post was created within the California State Auditor's Office, the bill “would authorize a member of the public to submit a request for review to the ombudsperson ... The bill would require the ombudsperson, within 30 days from receipt of a request for review, to make a determination, as provided, and would require the state agency to provide the public record if the ombudsperson determines that it was improperly denied.”

AB 469 by no means creates anything like a free-forall of transparency beyond the need for transparency in government. Government employees, for instance, deserve their privacy and security the same as the rest of us, and there are a number of legal exemptions properly within the California PRA.

But when there is a reasonable right to know, we should be able to know.