A California state senator trying to get the California State University Stanislaus to disclose the fee it will pay Sarah Palin for speaking at a campus event in June claims that he can prove the school withheld information about the event that should be public. -db
April 8, 2010
By Bob Egelko
A Bay Area lawmaker who’s trying to force disclosure of Sarah Palin’s speaking fee for her upcoming $500-a-plate event at a California State University campus said Wednesday he has proof that the school wrongly withheld a document about the event.
The newly uncovered e-mail from a CSU Stanislaus official doesn’t reveal how much the former Alaska governor will be paid for her June 25 appearance. But it shows that the university may have violated California’s Public Records Act by denying it had any undisclosed Palin-related documents, said state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco.
He said he’s asked Attorney General Jerry Brown to investigate.
“What other documents and correspondence are they hiding?” Yee said. He said the disclosure of the e-mail demonstrates the need for his bill, SB330, which would require university foundations, like the one sponsoring Palin’s appearance, to comply with the Public Records Act.
University spokeswoman Eve Hightower said the school wasn’t hiding anything, including the e-mail, which was circulated throughout the Turlock campus last week and was “meant to be shared with everyone.”
The CSU Stanislaus Foundation has arranged the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate’s fundraising speech at a black-tie celebration of the school’s 50th anniversary. The foundation has said it expects to raise $100,000 to $200,000, but refuses to divulge Palin’s fee, saying the terms of the contract require confidentiality.
A 2001 state appeals court ruling largely exempted private foundations at the 23 CSU campuses from the state’s public-disclosure requirements.
But Yee said the Stanislaus foundation uses university offices, phones and meeting rooms, is staffed almost entirely by university employees and has the university’s president, Hamid Shirvani, as its board chair.
That shows that the foundation is an arm of the university and subject to the same public-records rules, Yee said. And he said a law he sponsored in 2008 requires a public agency to disclose its records despite private confidentiality agreements.
Yee asked the university last week to reveal Palin’s fee and other contract terms. An advocacy group, Californians Aware, requested all records related to the event.
The school’s compliance officer, Gina Leguria, made the same response Tuesday to both requests: The university has no such documents and is referring the matter to the foundation. The foundation responded Wednesday by citing the confidentiality clause in Palin’s contract.
But Yee said his office has obtained at least one document that was covered by the Californians Aware request and should have been disclosed: a March 29 e-mail to the campus community from Susana Gajic-Bruyea, a university vice president and foundation official. It defended plans for Palin’s appearance, saying it would be privately funded and should raise significant sums for the school.
“The university’s claim of no documentation was inconceivable and now there is a smoking gun,” Yee said.
But Hightower, the university spokeswoman, said the e-mail was publicly circulated and therefore exempt from the Californians Aware request, which did not seek any documents “prepared for public release.”
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