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A&A: Does a councilmember use of personal email address mean all messages are exempt?

FAC November 22, 2011

Q: I was wondering if a city councilmember uses his personal email address as his primary source of contact, lists it on a city’s website as his email address, if any communication done on that email address is still exempt from the California Public Records Act? Is any legislation is coming down the line to address that? A: First of all, there is no rule that e-mail communications regarding the public’s business that are sent

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A&A: Blogger ‘s identity exposed, and legal threats made against her

FAC November 21, 2011

Q: I am writing today for guidance regarding my rights as a blogger. I am the author of a cosmetics complaints blog and creator and one of the admins of the complaints Facebook Page. The blog and page initially were started in an effort to obtain a refund from a cosmetics company due to sanitation questions. The company also had a recall in December of last year. The blog and page have slowly become more

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A&A: Can the city manager demand political cartoons removed from senior center?

FAC November 18, 2011

Q: Recently the city manager sent an e-mail to the president of the senior center regarding complaints  his office had received about the local newspaper’s political cartoons being posted on the wall inside the senior center. While the senior center is owned by the city, a local nonprofit pays rent on the building, maintains it and operates it. When asked, the City Manager responded that this is not a violation of the Brown Act because

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A&A: Can I access emails of city employees using personal emails for city business?

FAC November 17, 2011

Q: Our newspaper made an public records request for ”all emails to and from city employees” regarding a new parking meter system the city is using.  Our intention is to see whether employees have written emails stating that the system is not working properly. In response, the city attorney exempted an unspecified number of emails citing a ’deliberative process’ exemption in CCC 6252(d), 6254(a) and (k) and 6255. He cited cases including Rogers v. Superior

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FAC remembers founding member, P-E Publisher Tim Hays.

FAC November 15, 2011

Howard H. “Tim” Hays, the much honored former editor, publisher and chairman of the Press-Enterprise newspaper in Riverside, CA, and founding member of the First Amendment Coalition, died October 14 in St. Louis.  He was 94. “Tim was a rarity, a man whose moral compass was set on true,” Mel Opotowsky recalled in a Press-Enterprise article. “That is especially important as a newspaper owner because of the obligation as a public trust. There are many instances

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