PD Editorial: Public business shouldn’t be done in secret

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a number of questionable bills this year, as an editorial in Monday’s paper noted, making it all the more disappointing that he signed on of the worst bills to emerge from the Legislature in a long time.

We’re talking about Assembly Bill 1455 by Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, D-Arleta.

AB 1455 effectively tosses a big black shroud over contract negotiations between local government - cities, counties, school districts, special districts - and the unions that represent public employees.

For many local agencies, salaries and benefits are the single largest expense.

Moreover, many of the supervisors, council members and other elected officials who ratify these contracts rely heavily on public employee organizations for campaign contributions, volunteer work on campaigns and to turn out their members on Election Day.

And many of the public agency managers at the bargaining table benefit indirectly from compensation decisions affecting rank-and-file employees.

There is no easy away around those conflicts of interests.

The next best thing is ensuring that decisions are made transparently, with an opportunity for taxpayers to thoroughly understand the costs and rationales for approving collective bargaining agreements - and, if they see fit, to hold elected officials accountable at the polls.

AB 1455 seems to be designed to thwart that accountability.

Once it takes effect on Jan. 1, local agencies’ collective bargaining documents will be exempt from disclosure under the California Public Records Act.

The public already is denied access to these documents from state agencies, UC and CSU, and the public is seldom given more than the 72 hours advance notice required for agency agendas under the Ralph M. Brown Act before contracts are put up for a vote.

To be clear, we aren’t opposed to public employees receiving proper compensation for their work. They are our neighbors, and they are among the first to pitch in during and after a disaster like the recent wildfires.

But making contract decisions, including employee compensation, without public oversight is an invitation to reckless spending and poor decisions such as the retroactive retirement benefit increases that are choking off public services.

AB 1455 was supported by a long list of public employee unions while their employers were largely, and inexcusably, silent.

The impetus for this bill appears to be an Orange County blogger who filed a Public Records Act request for offers and counter-offers between the county and the deputy sheriffs’ union. The union challenged the request in court, a judge sided with public disclosure, and AB 1455 was introduced soon after.

Bocanegra was bounced from his Assembly seat by a political unknown in 2014 and returned to Sacramento two years later, with plenty of help from public employee unions. He may have felt obligated to carry their water.

But that doesn’t explain votes cast in favor of AB 1455 by all five North Coast legislators - state Sens. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, and Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and Assembly members Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, Marc Levine, D- San Rafael, and Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg - or the signature affixed to the bill by Gov. Jerry Brown.

We call on local legislators to take the lead in repealing AB 1455 or explain to their constituents why they should be kept in the dark about their contracts with public employees.