A Superior Court judge has ordered California State University of Stanislaus to comply with public records laws and release a speakers contract with Sarah Palin. -db
San Francisco Chronicle
August 26, 2010
By Nanette Asimov
California State University at Stanislaus violated public records laws and will have to release the speakers contract with Sarah Palin it had tried to keep secret, a judge has ruled.
The details of Palin’s contract to speak at a June 25 fundraiser for the foundation became national news last spring after foundation officials refused to tell state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, how much Palin would be paid. Yee has been trying to change a state law that shields campus foundations from public scrutiny.
The Palin story grew more bizarre in April after students found discarded pieces of the secret contract in a Dumpster on the property of the public university – after university officials told Yee and CalAware, an open-government group, that they didn’t have any of Palin-related documents.
CalAware sued, and in May, the foundation released hundreds of pages of Palin-related paperwork – but not the contract. Among them were e-mails showing that Charles Reed, chancellor of the 23-campus CSU system, favored suppressing the contract to avoid news stories about its contents.
That e-mail, and the finding that the university did possess Palin documents, led Stanislaus Superior Court Judge Roger Beauchesne to order the Turlock campus to release Palin’s contract.
In his Monday ruling, the judge said the contract was used “in the conduct of the public’s business; therefore, said contract is also a public record.”
CSU has yet to receive the judge’s ruling, said spokeswoman Claudia Keith, “We’re perplexed as to how he could have come to that conclusion,” she said. “Nevertheless, we’ll comply with whatever the court has ordered.”
Terry Francke, general counsel for CalAware, said the judge “sided with the public’s right to be informed about how its money is being spent.”
Yee said he also was pleased with the ruling. “The university openly violated a state law.”
Beauchesne’s ruling underscored that the foundation itself remains shielded from the state’s public records laws.
Yee’s SB330, which would overturn that law, was approved by lawmakers and is soon expected to land on the governor’s desk for approval or veto.
Copyright 2010 Hearst Communications Inc. FAC Content Use Policy