Gov. Brown. Veto SB 1300.
This bill would establish a stealth template for how to gut the California Public Records Act one economic and political sector at a time.
By Bruce B. Brugmann (with a First Amendment Coalition emergency message and a veto bulletin for Gov. Brown)
Possibly the bill most damaging to the public interest in years is sitting on Gov. Jerry Brown's desk for signature. It is SB 1300, which amounts to a refinery protection bill proposed by Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) and Assemblyperson Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), two legislators living in the shadow of the East Bay refineries who ought to know better. It was supported by oil companies, organized labor, and the Department of Industrial Relations and was passed by the Assembly on a 68-5 vote and by the Senate on a 34-0 vote.
The gist of the damage is that SB 1300 was amended at the last minute to force a CPRA requester to pay fees if a court rules against disclosure. As the California Newspaper Publishers Association explained in its current legislative bulletin, SB 1300 "would expand the definition of what constitutes a trade secret and erect an insurmountable barrier to any effort by a member of the public to obtain information about DOSH's performance in its role as a consumer watchdog over a refiner's conduct."Read more »