Open Government? Not at the Courts

California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald M. George says he’s committed to open government.

But officials who administer the state’s court system apparently haven’t gotten the message.

They have effectively denied a routine request for public information: who works at the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts and how much they get paid.

George himself wrote the lead opinion in a 2007 Supreme Court decision that would seem to have made granting such a request a no-brainer.

When a newspaper requested salaries of a group of top-paid public employees, George wrote that the public’s need for accountability demanded open records. Citing a lower court case, he said such information is “in many cases necessary to disclose inefficiency, favoritism, nepotism and fraud with respect to the government’s use of public funds” (International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers v. the Superior Court of Alameda County). Click here to search the full opinion.

Aware of George’s opinion, a researcher at SEIU 721’s Center for Public Accountability asked the Administrative Office of the Courts to provide names and salary information a month ago.

AOC employees are helping to make unprecedented decisions to close courthouses and furlough court workers while preserving expensive programs such as development of a billion dollar-plus computer system.

We are not the only ones who are interested in how the AOC is spending its money. As the San Jose Mercury-News put it in a recent article, “The agency has ballooned in size, cost, power and stature in recent years, reaching its peak at a time when the rest of California government is struggling with budget deficits and cutbacks in everything from education to programs for the poor and elderly.” Click here to read the article.

Six days after our request, having received no response, the researcher spoke with the AOC’s designated media contact, Philip Carrizosa, who said he believed the requested information was public, even though the judiciary was not subject to the California Public Records Act, and readily available. He expressed surprise that the AOC had not acknowledged the Center’s request.

Three weeks later, the Center still has no answer and no acknowledgement from the AOC despite two more conversations with Carrizosa, who said each time that he would check with those handling the request.

So much for open government at the courts. – Ted Rohrlich