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Labor unions, again, want public's business done in secret
As reported and commented on in the East Bay Times, AB1455 was just introduced in the State Assembly.
Many of you will remember when CSPP attempted to get Marin County, all cities and special districts to adopt COIN - Civic Openness in Negotiations. We failed to convince any local governments to adopt this relatively benign method of informing the public regarding negotiations, before they were passed. It would have required that the full impact of those negotiations on the taxpayers be revealed prior to acceptance. I am attaching the COIN graphic that we used at the time, which was created by Costa Mesa at that time.
To their credit, some towns did adopt certain aspects of COIN, but not all towns and certainly not all COIN requirements.
Shortly after COIN became a buzzword and more groups were insisting that their governments also adopt its transparency requirements, along came SB331, which effectively gave all governments an excuse not to adopt it. There is a link in this article to SB331, called "the poison pill".
Now they're at it again. This time it is an effort to restrict aspects of COIN that were in fact fully adopted by some governments, specifically the right to file Public Records Act requests for the offers and counter-offers from ongoing negotiations.
See article in East Bay Times here.
It is an effort to slam the door on the one sliver of transparency that brave governments adopted.
AB1455 would, in fact, give our elected officials one more reason not to allow taxpayers to know what's going on behind closed doors. They will simply continue to hand us the bill.
Write Marc Levine and Mike McGuire. Stop this bill in its tracks. Then we will start a new push for COIN and the repeal of SB331.
State Assembly Marc Levine: Assemblymember.Levine@assembly.ca.gov
State Senator Mike McGuire: senator.mcguire@senate.ca.gov