Is technology killing California’s public records law?

The recent Cyber Dust secret text messaging scandal at the Fresno Unified School District is exposing gaps in California’s public records law.

The app allows users to send confidential text messages that are deleted as soon as they are read. Now open government advocates are asking a big question: Are we entering a new age of government officials using technology to hide from public scrutiny? Continue…

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California’s approval of funding bill continues State Bar reforms

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed the State Bar of California’s annual dues bill, allowing the agency to collect dues and stay in business another year.

But mandates under Senate Bill 387 include new requirements for greater transparency, financial accountability and improved attorney-discipline reporting. Continue…

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Sunlight Foundation: California shines a light on political dark money

California has brought us a series of great pieces of transparency news over the past month. 

However, the implementation of the campaign finance reforms enacted through the passage of 2014’s SB 27 have really helped us feel the sunlight. Continue….

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Editorial: California bill punishes cities that do right thing

Last December, the California Senate’s new President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, shut down a small legislative staff bureau filled with investigators who provided oversight of a few of the state’s myriad bureaucracies and government programs. De Leon decided that Senate committees would now handle oversight – and his office has since dubbed various run-of-the-mill Senate hearings as “oversight hearings.”

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California: Wilk’s State Agency transparency bill passes Senate committee

SACRAMENTO – Assemblyman Scott Wilk’s, R- Santa Clarita, bill AB 85 which will stop state agencies from taking advantage of a loophole that allows them to hold closed door meetings without public involvement passed unanimously out of the Senate Governmental Organization Committee.

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Open Data Bills Move Forward in California

While California may be home to some of the most aggressively forward-thinking tech companies in the world, that enthusiasm for innovation hasn’t carried over to the public sector. State and local governments have been frustratingly slow to make public data available online. There hasn’t been anything close to a statewide standard, leaving individual agencies to voluntarily develop open data policies, often in an inconsistent and piecemeal fashion, or not at all.  

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