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Peter Scheer

Water district, in settlement with FAC, agrees to disclose water usage by corporations

Peter Scheer October 30, 2014

A Southern California water district, as part of a settlement of a lawsuit brought by the First Amendment Coalition, has agreed to tell the public how much water each of its corporate customers is pumping from underground aquifers. The Desert Water Agency in Palm Springs had published this information in past years, but changed policy in 2013, ostensibly to protect the “privacy interests” of its corporate customers. The water district relied on section 6254.16 of

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Brown signs SB 1300, but calls on Legislature to fix public access issues

Peter Scheer October 17, 2014

Governor Brown has signed SB 1300, the refinery regulation bill that FAC and others opposed because of last-minute amendments that would weaken rights of access under the Public Records Act. However, the Governor, in a signing message, made clear he wants the Legislature to pass a new bill to fix those amendments. The Governor said that Senator Lonie Hancock, the author of SB 1300, “has committed to introduce clean up legislation next year and work

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If the federal FOIA shared the limitations of California’s public records law, large parts of American history would be blank.

Peter Scheer October 14, 2014

Fortunately, the California Legislature didn’t have a hand in crafting the federal Freedom of Information Act. If it had, the American people would have been denied the primary source material for a large chunk of recent American history.Much of what we know about the major themes of US political history during the 35 years following World War II comes from the investigative files of the FBI. From the anti-Communist witch hunts of the 40s and

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Tom Burke and Quentin Kopp join FAC Board

Peter Scheer October 1, 2014

The First Amendment Coalition is delighted to announce the appointment of two new members of its Board of Directors: Thomas Burke, a prominent lawyer specializing in first amendment, intellectual property and media litigation; and Quentin Kopp, former Superior Court judge, State Senator and San Francisco Supervisor. Burke is a partner in the San Francisco office of Davis Wright Tremaine, a national law firm. His clients have included CNN, Amazon, the Center for Biological Diversity, the

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FAC’s letter to Gov Brown, urging veto of SB 1300

Peter Scheer September 17, 2014

Here is FAC’s letter to the Governor, urging his veto of SB 1300:   Dear Governor Brown, On behalf of the First Amendment Coalition (FAC), I am writing to request your veto—or, alternatively, a qualified signing–of Senate Bill 1300, which requires oil companies to file reports on scheduled shutdowns, typically for maintenance, of their refinery facilities. We have no objection to the bill’s substantive regulatory requirements. However, we object strongly to procedural requirements that will

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