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By Kimberly Beltran
Monday, September 23, 2013
School districts and local government agencies will forever be required to provide meeting notices and documents to the public if voters agree this June to add that provision to California’s Constitution.
But responsibility for the mandate’s costs – estimated as much as $20 million annually – would no longer belong to the state, which now reimburses local agencies who submit claims for these so-called unfunded mandates.
“This Constitutional Amendment – SCA 3 – makes it clear that local governments have a duty to comply with both the Public Records Act and the Brown Act, and that the costs associated with that are to be borne by local governments,” said Jim Ewert, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publisher’s Association and long-time advocate for open access laws.
“It’s saying that these things are so fundamental to the democratic process that they should never be subject to the financial whims of the Legislature.”
California’s two key open-government laws have survived myriad challenges over the years, but it was in response to proposed changes to both last year that prompted Senate leader Darrell Steinberg and Sen. Mark Leno to seek a more permanent solution.
Attempting to right the state’s floundering finances, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature in adopting the 2012-13
