Yet the video footage in question, of Assembly floor sessions, is available to the public on the California Channel online, and on Comcast cable television. It is in fact, paid for by the public.

Donnelly’s campaign has a video posted on YouTube.
”Patriot, Not Politician,” features many clips of the Assemblyman Donnelly speaking on the Assembly floor, which Waldie says is not allowed “for any political or commercial purpose.”

However, Assembly Speaker John A. Perez has official Legislative video on his Facebook page (captured in a screen shot to the right). And Perez himself is running for higher office, announcing in October he was running for state controller.

So is the Democratic-controlled Assembly playing games with Donnelly, a Republican?

“State law prohibits the use of any ‘television signal generated by the Assembly … for any political or commercial purpose,’ and Waldie said he plans to issue the Donnelly campaign a cease and desist letter Friday,” the Sacramento Bee reported.

“The floor shots are definitely ours,” Waldie said.

Jennifer Kerns, Donnelly’s campaign spokeswoman, said their interpretation is that Assembly proceedings footage is part of the public record, and can be used by the campaign.

“‘It’s our understanding that once that video is aired publicly that it’s part of the public domain,’ she said, adding that she was looking at the state Capitol at the moment and that ‘the taxpayers pay for that building,'” the Sacramento Bee reported.

Perez’s video footage was posted on his Facebook page July 1, the day Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 1500. The bill will impose a $1 billion tax increase on businesses and employers who operate inside California, but are headquartered out-of-state, to pay for a “Middle-Class Scholarship” for California’s public college students.

If the video rule doesn’t apply to the Assembly Speaker, is Waldie’s demand that Assemblyman Donnelly pull the campaign video footage legitimate?

What is right?

I received the following email message from Steven Maviglio, Communications Director for Speaker Perez:

“The Speaker’s website is a state website, not a campaign website. And, of course, that’s permissible.

I’m not sure why the legislature thinks that a building owned by the public, used for crafting public policy and setting up the state budget, is somehow immune from transparency and public view, after the video is aired publicly?

This is an accountability issue. As long as no one is misshaping the message, then where’s the harm?

Local governing bodies and Congress use footage from committees and the floor all the time in campaign commercials. Why should the California State legislature be any different?

Many members of the Legislature have used their Cal Channel speeches on their websites. Here are just a few:

First Amendment

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ensures that “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,” as Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the 1943 case West Virginia v. Barnette.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

By Katy Grimes

SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers have reversed course on the sneaky attempt to reduce access to public records, as mandated by the Public Records Act. The act provides Californians the ability to obtain documents about state and local government actions.

Instead, according to the Los Angeles Times, Legislative leaders and Gov. Jerry Brown are looking at a constitutional amendment that would force local governments to pay for a state mandate that always has been picked up by the state. The result will be even more pressure on local budgets. So much for all of the feel-good political rhetoric about support for local governments.

Here’s what happened. On June 14,  AB 76  was passed by both houses of the Legislature and sent to the governor. It would gut the state Public Records Act at the local level. The last-minute trailer bill language would remove local governments’ current requirements to respond within 10 days to public records act requests, or to assist those requesting documents.

But opposition to the bill was immense from outraged members of the public and the media.

So on June 20, the Assembly passed SB 71, which is the same as AB 76, but with the the language threatening the Records Act removed.

Blame Brown

Blame was cast on Brown, who put the requirement to suspend the California Public Records Act in his January budget proposal. On the Assembly floor Thursday in a session I attended, Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, D-Los Angeles, said passing AB 76 was merely to save money. He said, “The governor, wanting to save money, put in the provision.”

Then Blumenfield, clearly on the defense, added a knock on the press itself for not noticing what was in the budget. “Six months ago, there was not a peep out of the press or anyone in public,” he said.

Assemblywoman Kristen Olsen, R-Modesto, pointed out that her bill, ACA 4, which would require all bills to be in print for 72 hours before being voted on, would have prevented the mess Democratic lawmakers found themselves in over attempting to strip the Public Records Act.

As I wrote in May, Democrats killed her bill even before it could be heard in the Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 6, which is led by Blumenfield.

Blumenfield did not back down. “Those arguments have nothing to do with this bill,” he said in response to Olsen. But ACA 4 would have assured that AB 76 had 72 hours to be scrutinized carefully; instead, it was subjected to a quick vote with almost no scrutiny of what was in it, leading to the ongoing crisis.

“The governor’s proposal was in place six months ago,” Blumenfield said again, even though both the Assembly and Senate slipped the provision into budget trailer bills at the eleventh hour. Nothing in a budget proposal by any governor is automatic, but must be written up into a bill by the Legislature.

Additionally, under increasing pressure this week, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, D-Los Angeles, released a joint statement Thursday admitting, “[T]here needs to be both an immediate fix to ensure local entities comply with the California Public Records Act and a long term solution so the California Public Records Act is not considered a reimbursable mandate.”

Public Records Act provisions

Assemblywoman Olsen called her legislative colleagues “hypocritical” for  reversing course on gutting the Public Records Act, while still opposing her ACA 4 requiring bills to be in print for 72 hours before a vote.

“I find it interesting the same folks who didn’t want to release their office budgets two years ago are falling all over themselves now to get SB 71 passed,” Olsen said.

Olsen was referring to a big dust-up in August 2011, when  the Assembly refused to comply with the state-required performance audit of Assembly administrative offices.

I wrote back then, “The Standing Rules of the Assembly call for an annual performance audit of the Assembly. But the Assembly had never actually complied with this rule,” prior to August 2011.

A political about-face

Both Blumenfield and Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, maintained that the trailer bill measures were meant to save the state millions of dollars in reimbursement to local governments for fulfilling Public Records requests. And both of the lawmakers claimed the budget bills would not make records unavailable.

However, every local government Public Records Act request I’ve made already comes with a hefty charge by the agency for reproducing the documents.

Brown, Steinberg and Perez announced a plan to introduce a constitutional amendment to go before voters next June, making changes to the California Public Records Act.

After a closed-door meeting of the Senate Democratic Caucus, a joint statement was released by Steinberg and Perez, which said that, as the Senate constitutional amendment progresses, the Assembly and Senate will work together “to give voters the chance to make clear that good government shouldn’t come with an extra price tag.”

Steinberg and Perez said, “We agree there needs to be both an immediate fix to ensure local entities comply with the California Public Records Act and a long-term solution so the California Public Records Act is not considered a reimbursable mandate.”

If the change ends up becoming law, then local governments will have pick up the tab for what until now has been a state mandate paid for out of state general-fund revenues. This would be on top of all the other mandates the state imposes on local governments, including the mandated pension spiking a dozen years ago and the recent shifting of state prisoners into local jails.

This also is a reason why, as Dave Roberts reported on CalWatchdog.com, the Legislature is trying to make it easier for local governments to raise parcel taxes, which then would pay for shifting the cost of honest government from the state to the local levels.