firstamendment

Community College Senate, Listservs, and Public Record Q: This question refers to the Academic/Faculty Senate of a small California Community College. Should the listserv, described below, be made public, and all archived messages placed in a publicly accessible location?  Or should the listserv be immediately discontinued?  Or should anyone be allowed to subscribe and post? Or do the faculty have the right to privacy in these issues? There is a “listserv” among the faculty that

Request Denials, No Documentation Q: Can our City Clerk deny us information because he/she “has no documentation” regarding a municipal action being taken that may require a primary legal action? Our Economic Development Director is hiring a consultant to counter a member of the public’s nomination of a building to the State Historic Resource Register and I was told that verbally. However, when I ask about it officially, I get the answer from the Clerk

City Employee Information and Privacy Q: The human resources director in our city says the city has a policy requiring written consent from any past employee before releasing information about the individual’s employment there, including dates of employment. My questions: 1. Is this a permissible policy under state public records law and 2. Can I request a former policeman’s personnel file from the city? A: To take your second question first, under something called the

Drafts and Public Record Q: My city is reviewing and commenting on a Draft EIR for a large project they are undertaking. They have been getting drafts and commenting on it and then returning the comments to the consultant who presumably is editing the EIR in response to the comments. Are the Drafts of the EIR public records that I should be given access to and are the comments to the consultant public record too?