SB 1370 SB 1370, the bill sponsored by Senator Leland Yee to protect high school and college journalism instructors from being disciplined or removed for protecting their student’s freedom of the press, will be heard in the Assembly Judiciary Committee on June 10th. The bill passed out of the Senate and now must be heard in the Assembly Committee and, then, voted on by the Assembly. SB 1370 comes in the wake of 12 documented

SB 1732 SB 1732, sponsored and campaigned for by Senator Gloria Romero, would overturn the 2006 ruling in Wolf v. City of Fremont that significantly weakened the prohibition against serial meetings. Serial meetings are informal meetings that take place outside of formal public meetings between public official either in person, by proxy or by telephone or email in an attempt to discuss public business without being subject to public scrutiny. Serial meetings are prohibited under

The Sacramento Bee, in an editorial in today’s paper about Vallejo’s bankrupcy, backs the idea of legislation to shine some light on compensation contracts between municipalities and public employee unions. The editorial cites an article by CFAC’s executive director. Here’s the SacBee editorial: —– Editorial: Let public in on government labor deals Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, May 13, 2008 Peter Scheer, who heads the California First Amendment Coalition, has a novel idea: End the

AB 1978 AB 1978, a Bill that would have closed public access to ‘basemap’ data for Geographic Information Systems (GIS), put forth by Assemblymember Jose Solorio, was dropped after opposition from the GIS/GeoData and freedom of information communities. GIS “basemap” data is used to create the base layer for all local computer mapping. The bill sought to exempt from the Public Records Act, which requires all government data to be available to the public, “metadata,