The Sacramento Bee: Opinion: Sunshine’s not bright in California’s Capitol

By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
June 8, 2015

• Legislature supports ‘sunshine laws’ for others
• However, it exempts itself from those laws
• Mild reform is shelved without vote

California legislators are steadfast champions of transparency in government – until it comes to themselves.

If applied to local governments and other state agencies, the Legislature says taxpayers and voters have a right to attend open meetings where decisions are made, access public documents and otherwise enjoy the protections of “sunshine laws.”

But as the next week will doubtless demonstrate, lawmakers reserve the right to draft major sections of the state budget in secret and bring it to a vote with little or no time for review, even by members of the minority party.

Moreover, they will push through dozens of budget “trailer bills” that will contain major changes in policy, some of which will have little or nothing to do with the budget, virtually at a moment’s notice.

Why? Because they have exempted themselves from sunshine laws applied to other branches and levels of government, and because they are oblivious to criticism.

Some apologists for the secrecy claim that it’s needed to enact good governmental policies that would otherwise be thwarted by special interests. In fact, however, the sneakiness is largely to do the bidding of interest groups.

Two years ago, the 3rd District Court of Appeal ruled that it was illegal for the Legislature to pass supposed trailer bills weeks, or even months, after the budget itself was enacted. That, however, was nothing more than a speed bump in the Legislature’s drive to do the public’s business in semi-secrecy.

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