The value of transparency
Government transparency should not fall victim to California’s budget cuts. The public’s access to information cannot be left to the discretion of the authorities.
The corruption scandal in the city of Bell is the best argument against Governor Jerry Brown’s decision that the state government won’t reimburse cities for the cost of providing public documents. In fact, this means that it will be up to the authorities to fulfill requests from citizens.
Assembly Speaker John Perez is right in trying to prevent the governor and the state Senate from further weakening the openness of the government. California is already one of the states with the least transparency in government in the U.S., according to national studies.
What is surprising is that Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg is defending the funding cut by arguing that first, there should be some public entity that does not comply with the California Public Records Act.
The second option is a constitutional amendment so voters can decide in 2014 whether to require cities to comply with transparency demands without having this depend on reimbursement from the state.
In reality, the official estimate, the “tens of millions” that should be saved thanks to the governor’s decision, are insufficient compared to the price of having a lack of transparency in public administration.
We already know that when people do not oversee the actions of their elected officials, the results can be bad governments and corruption. Hindering the process of obtaining information contributes to having more secrets and less transparency.
