We all get tired, we’re sure — as journalists, and as members of the public — of non-disclosure agreements entered into by fancy people, and by politicians.
NDAs — what’s the point? Other than to not let embarrassing facts become public. Most of us are on the side of the facts.
But let the celebrities and their minions sign what they will. In California, when it comes to matters in the public interest, we should not let our elected officials enter into NDAs that involve issues that affect us all. And yet, it turns out, they are doing so all the time.
That’s why it’s somewhat amazing to find that last week the California Assembly on Friday unanimously approved a bill that would make it a crime for state lawmakers to sign non-disclosure agreements when they determine how to use taxpayer dollars or put together state laws.
Because, thank goodness for Sacramento station KCRA’s report Ashley Zavala’s reporting on the issue of legally binding contracts that force the people involved to keep information secret.
As she reports, “The legislation, AB 1370, is a direct result of KCRA 3’s reporting on how California’s government has either used them or allowed special interest groups to use them on a major public project and state laws. The bill now heads to the state Senate for consideration.”
“This is really a no-nonsense, obvious piece of legislation to do,” said Assemblyman Joe Patterson, R-Rocklin, who wrote the proposal.
As we have commented on in this space before, the really absurd thing for California taxpayers is that all the while that the Legislature has been dead set in recent years on building what is for most of us an entirely unecessary new luxury annex near the state Capitol in Sacramento, “KCRA 3 was the first to report the use of NDAs in the California Legislature’s construction of a new $1.1 billion office building for state lawmakers. The Legislature directed 2,000 people, including five state lawmakers and dozens of government workers, to sign NDAs to keep broad information about the project secret. Democratic leaders haven’t given an update on the project in years,” as Zacala reports.
In addition, NDAs were also used in the secret talks backed by the labor organization SEIU California in last year’s absurd raise to $20 an hour wages for all fast-food workers in the state — all except, ast it turns out, workers at certain bakeries, in an exemption that seems entirely aimed at the Panera stores owned by a billionaire backer of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“Joseph Bryant, an SEIU official who is also a member of California’s Fast Food Council, which is meant to set the wages and working conditions for the workers across the state, would not confirm or deny that he signed the NDA,” Zavala reports.
“Republican lawmakers twice last year tried to introduce legislation that would have broadly restricted the use of NDAs by lawmakers, staff, other government officials and lobbyists when crafting public policy. Democrats in the Assembly claimed the measure was too broad.”
Disclosing items in the public interest is never something that is too broad for most Californians. When is the supermajority in the Legislature going go understand that? What is the harm done in going clean with what electeds are up to in spending the money citizens give them?
