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Berkeley PD’s $24,000 chat with a reporter

FAC May 19, 2012

The city of Berkeley will spend up to $24,000 for a consultant to review the police department’s media policies. The move follows the chief’s decision to have an officer make a midnight call on a reporter whose story irked the chief. Chief Michael Meehan ordered Sgt. Mary Kusmiss to the home of reporter Doug Oakley at 12:45 a.m. March 9. Meehan was dissatisfied with a story on a town hall meeting about whether police should

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California: Palo Alto board of education accused of violating open meeting law with confidential memos

donal brown May 18, 2012

The Palo Alto Weekly is asking the Palo Alto schools superintendent to stop sending secret weekly memos to school trustees. The newspaper claims that the memos exclude the public from the deliberative process thus violating California’s open meeting law, the Brown Act. The newspaper cited the state attorney general’s handbook on the Brown Act that warns against using confidential memos. -db From Palo Alto Weekly, May 15, 2012, by Palo Alto Weekly staff. Full story

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California: Orange County water district drops closed session on negotiations with desal company

donal brown May 15, 2012

Amid a dispute over whether negotiations over the price of water from a proposed desalination plant can be held in a closed session, the Municipal Water District of Orange County dropped the item from the agenda of their May 15 meeting. Opponents of the plant raised questions about whether water rights were real property held by the desal company so that negotiations over the rights were exempt from the open meeting requirement under the Brown

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Federal court shields Google/NSA partnership from public scrutiny

donal brown May 14, 2012

The U.S. Court of Appeals from D.C. ruled that interchanges between Google and the National Security Agency on cybersecurity and encryption are not part of the public record. The Electronic Privacy Information Center used a Freedom of Information Act request to seek the records following a cyber attack against Google in 2012. -db From The Blog of Legal Times, May 11, 2012, by Mike Scarcella. Full story

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California: Shasta courts admits error and releases records of 2400 criminal cases

donal brown May 10, 2012

At the insistence of The Redding Record Searchlight that records of some 2400 criminal cases were being withheld illegally, the Shasta County Superior Court finally examined their policy, found no basis for it and released the records. The court was withholding records of criminal cases involving arrest warrants. -db From The Redding Record Searchlight, May 8, 2012, by Sean Longoria. Full story

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