Why California Shouldn’t Weaken Its Public Records Law

By David Myers, especially for CalMatters

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Kelly Davis was one of San Diego’s most prominent investigative journalists. She died two weeks ago after a battle with cancer. She was 53.

The longtime reporter single-handedly forced the crisis of preventable deaths in San Diego County jails onto the front page of the public agenda. Her work has won awards. She changed politics. She moved the legislation.

She saved the lives of people who will never know her name.

She also fought the county government when it came after her memos and tried to keep public records secret.

In 2017, the San Diego Sheriff’s Office was sued by a widow whose husband died in the county jail — one of dozens of preventable deaths Kelly reported on.

Rather than answer for what happened, the sheriff’s office demanded Kelly’s notes, interviews and confidential sources — material that documented what jail officials did and what they tried to hide.

The same agency that has publicly said it knows of no systemic problems in its prisons — despite Kelly’s years of published reporting — asked for the work product of a journalist whose sources could be most damaging to them. And the sheriff’s office used a grieving widow’s lawsuit as a cover to expose those sources.

Kelly refused. The press freedom community has united. And a judge ordered a stay.

As classic author Ray Bradbury once wrote, “Everyone has to leave something behind … something that your hand has touched in some way so that your soul has a place to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower that you planted, you are there.

Kelly planted stories. They are still growing.

Her fight for transparency in prison is exactly why Assembly Bill 1821 shall not become law in any form that weakens the California Public Records Act.

MP Blanca PachecoDemocrat from Downey, introduced the bill with the stated goal of reducing burdensome and commercially motivated public records requests. The bill has since been amended as per fierce public resistance. Much of what made it dangerous has been removed.

But what remains would still allow agencies to take 10 calendar days to respond to records requests, instead of 10 business days, and have extensions of up to 14 business days.

For communities that depend on timely information—disability rights advocates, environmental justice groups, families seeking answers about a loved one who died in custody—the delay is no small inconvenience; it is denial.

Earlier iterations of the bill would have allowed public agencies to charge up to $66 per hour to process some record requests. This would empower the courts to consider a “malicious intent of the applicant.” And that would create new grounds for rejecting requests.

These provisions have been weaned, but the infrastructure to bring them back is in place.

Kelly Davis argued why the Legislature shouldn’t rewrite the Public Records Act.

After 35 years in the San Diego Sheriff’s Office, I know how institutions respond to scrutiny and how they calculate the cost of transparency versus the comfort of opacity.

I have also filed dozens of public records requests in my post-retirement accountability work. I’ve watched agencies use every tool at their disposal—delayed responses, flawed extensions, overbroad privilege claims—to slow the flow of information the public is entitled to see.

Kelly’s reporting on prison deaths, which began in 2013, changed the way I saw the system I thought I knew.

She asked questions I hadn’t thought to ask. She submitted requests for files that no one else was submitting. She built the evidentiary protocol that forced Sacramento to act.

This work was only possible because the Public Records Act gave her the legal right to demand answers. Weaken that right — even incrementally, even with the best of intentions — and the next Kelly Davis may never get the records that will become the next one.”Dying behind bars“investigation.

The California State Association of Counties has reported a nearly 50 percent increase in public records requests over the past three years. This is not an abuse crisis; democracy works.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.