By Rachel Brahinsky

A NEW TWIST for 2002 in the public-access wars is the push to increase government secrecy in the name of the war on terrorism. In fact, bills that could limit your right to access records and your ability to observe public agency meetings – even your right to know the meetings will take place – far outnumber bills to improve access. Here are a few key measures to watch this session:

Criminalizing political speech

If passed, A.B. 1945, by S. Joseph Simitian (D-Palo Alto), would make it a misdemeanor for any person to leak information that was shared during a closed session without permission of every other person at the session. Open-government advocates fear this would criminalize political speech. It could also make it much harder for those who attend illegal closed sessions to blow the whistle.

Increasing secret sessions

Several bills would increase public agencies' right to meet secretly – especially in case of purported threats to security.

S.B. 1238, by James Brulte (R-Cucamonga), would allow school boards to go into closed session when they meet with employee groups or unions, essentially excluding labor negotiations from the Ralph M. Brown Act, which governs public meetings. Though the goal is to allow unions and school boards to negotiate freely, the bill would go further, allowing bargaining negotiations to occur without a public announcement of any kind – no notice, no agenda, and no mention in the press.

A.B. 2072, by Dennis Mountjoy (R-Monrovia), would beef up the right of state boards and commissions to talk about security matters behind closed doors. The California Public Employees' Retirement System and others are behind the bill, which will likely gain support in the name of the so-called terrorism war.

S.B. 1643, by Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), would permit public agencies to hold emergency meetings with less than one hour's notice and permit closed-session discussions during those meetings. Currently agencies have to inform the press at least an hour before having an emergency session and cannot hold secret sessions. While this might be necessary in case of terrorist attack, open-government advocates fear it could easily be misused for other purposes.

Similarly A.B. 2645, by Sam Aanestad (R-Grass Valley), would add a new category of allowable secret sessions in cases of state security threats. Current law permits such meetings when there are threats to public buildings. Under Aanestad's bill, threats to water, electricity, and wastewater services would also trigger secret sessions. In addition, private security consultants would be added to the list of people, which currently includes state and local law enforcement officials, with whom an agency can hold such a session.

Exempting records

Steve Peace (D-El Cajon) – the godfather of the state's botched electricity deregulation plan – wants to allow public agencies to essentially make up their own personal list of records they can keep secret. S.B. 1386 would allow state agencies to refer to their own individual privacy policies, which they already are allowed to create, to come up with new records they can legally withhold. The effect: agencies could create a list exempting just about any category of records they choose, avoiding decades of carefully negotiated public records law.

Protecting privacy?

Several bills this session have been introduced in the name of privacy. But some are concerned they will go too far. Two to watch are S.B. 1614 (Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough) and A.B. 2278 (John Campbell, R-Irvine).

Speier's bill would prevent commercial use of personal information normally available to the public. Records protected by the bill would include "an index or comprehensive compilation" of birth, death, divorce, and property title records. If the person named in the record chooses to "opt-in" – a choice they'd indicate on new forms that local agencies would have to create – the record will remain public.

In a related attempt to protect personal data, Campbell's bill would bar a public agency from giving out an individual's residential address, phone number, mother's maiden name, social security number, or place of birth, except to representatives of other public agencies.

Shining a little sun