Your eyes on California Government

AUGUST 29, 2011

By STEVEN GREENHUT

Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-La Canada-Flintridge, has been taking the lead role as the advocate for openness in the California Legislature, as he battles Assembly Speaker John Perez and fellow Democrats over the release of the spending records of individual members. But while advocates for less government secrecy have much to applaud in his current campaign, it seems apparent that Portantino’s efforts stem from anger at the way he was treated rather than from any deep-seated principle.

Declaring the partial release of member-by-member spending data by his Assembly foes on Friday at 5 pm as “incomplete and deceptive,” Portantino — during a press conference in his office this morning — declared that “a secret budget is a corrupt budget” and insisted that “The games must stop. The public must have access to how its money is spent.” The Rules Committee data from Friday put Portantino at the top of the heap as the Assembly’s biggest spender. But Portantino championed an analysis by the Stanford-based California Common Sense that showed clearly that the spending data was manipulated to embarrass Portantino.

CACS’ Dakin Sloss said he found “shocking” manipulations that suggest that money was shifted around to hide spending by some members and accentuate it by others. One of the items found in the CACS analysis handed out at the press conference: “Personal staff spending is under-reported, whereas caucus, committee, leadership and overhead staff spending is over-reported, suggesting that Expenditure Data reports personal staff as other types of staff.” In other words, the Assembly members who are against full openness of their staff expenses hid many of their own personal staff as caucus or leadership staff — except in Portantino’s case.

According to Sloss’ analysis, Portantino’s personal staff spending is 18th in the Assembly, not first. Portantino and Sloss conclude that the Assembly leadership is trying to punish Portantino for opposing the budget and for exposing the lack of transparency in legislative spending. As CACS puts it in a statement, “The various discrepancies … raise suspicions that the expenditure data may have been released less for transparency’s sake and more as a vendetta against the seeker of transparency.”

Following the press conference, Portantino testified in the Rules Committee on behalf of his HR20, which would implement various provisions promoting open meetings and records in the Assembly. His bill lost 6-5 to an alternative measure backed by the leadership that would send the matter to committee for further analysis. Portantino depicted the vote as a clear choice either “for or against transparency.” At the press conference, he declared, “The need for transparency has never been more urgent or necessary.”

But let’s remember that this whole ordeal started because Portantino’s budget was slashed after he was the sole Democrat to vote against the budget. He was upset by cuts in education spending and voted “no” against the will of his caucus. So he was punished. After the punishment, he demanded full disclosure of office budgets and was told, as the Sacramento Bee reports, that such budgets are exempt from the California Public Records Act. The battle, which has drawn in some California newspapers, has raged ever since then.

While the California Newspaper Publishers Association said that Portantino has been with them more often than not, the organization was involved in a political battle with Portantino in 2008 over perhaps the most significant open-records issue the state has faced in decades. Portantino was working at the behest of the police unions to keep information quiet about abusive police officers following the Copley Press v. Superior Court of San Diego County decision.

As the Los Angeles Times reported, “In that case … the court prohibited public disclosure of personnel records of a sheriff’s deputy appealing his discipline to a civil service commission. The court majority made clear that its ruling had no bearing on the disciplinary hearings, but LAPD brass has rebuffed efforts by The Times and other news media groups to loosen its restrictions.” Police unions used that decision to stop the release of virtually any information about the conduct of police officers. After Copley, even the worst-behaving officers were granted protections and the public was no longer able to learn about officers who abused their power and used deadly force. The decision has clamped down on public information since then and has imposed a veil of secrecy over the most powerful agencies and powerful officials Californians will encounter.

Then-Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, introduced legislation that would have corrected the problem: “The legislation, SB 1019, would have allowed, but not required, the LAPD to return to its long-standing policy of releasing officer’s disciplinary records and allowing the news media and other members of the public to attend disciplinary hearings,” according to the Times report.

Portantino was on the side of secrecy and, along with two other legislators, received a harsh tongue-lashing from Romero: “I was really taken aback by the [bill's] death by silence. The fear, you could feel it — the fear of what will happen if you look out for the public’s interests when they may differ from the interests of the law enforcement lobby.”

I was at the Senate hearing where the legislation was killed. Here is my account of how the police unions bullied the legislators.

But Portantino’s role was even more nefarious than the others’ role. He was going to add amendments to a bill that would have codified the worst elements of Copley, thus making it even more difficult to overturn the decision. He pulled back after strong opposition, but Portantino clearly was doing the bidding of a police union research group that has advocated nearly totalitarian levels of secrecy when it comes to law enforcement agencies.

It’s clearly a good idea to release the full records of how legislators use their budgets. These are public funds and the leadership is trying to conceal its behavior — all the promises of analyzing and future information releases notwithstanding. So I champion what Portantino is doing. But if it passed, the current Rules Committee would no doubt tinker with some formulas — just as it tinkered with the data it released Friday — and then announce its results, which would offer little more to the public than was released before. The bill only applies to the current session any way.

The money at stake here is a pittance compared to the billions of dollars squandered in other ways by the Legislature. This is a food fight. Nothing more. Legislators are getting hot and bothered because this is a fight that involves their reputations and their personal budgets. It is not a matter that will have an enormous effect on the citizens of California. There is no defining principle here, unless one considers ego to be a defining principle.

I asked Portantino about his Copley vote and he said it was his only bad one on the openness issue and that he is “not perfect.” Maybe so, but when I look at the record it’s clear. Portantino’s actions on Copley are having a terrible negative effect on Californians, whereas the openness battle he is fighting now is a small thing. It’s easy to conclude that this is about his ox having been gored more than anything else.

Yes, Portantino is right and so were the Republicans who sided with him. Maybe next time they will wage this big battle over something that matters.