Categories
Accountability folly government transparency

A Most Bizarre Misuse

Increasingly, folks in government balk at the commonsense requirement for transparency. They don’t like the basic idea of a republic, apparently — that we have rights; folks in government have duties. They are bound to serve us.

And allow us to oversee their work.

The latest bizarre attempt to wiggle out of transparency comes from California. A proposed bit of legislation, AB-​2880, seeks to grant state employees copyright protection — for their everyday work as public servants.

“The bill claims to protect access to the documents through the California Public Records Act,” explains Steven Greenhut in The American Spectator, “but it gives the government the ability to control what people do with many of those records.” Emphasis added — to direct your attention to the enormity of the increase in government prerogatives.

Public records are called “public” not merely because they putatively serve the public, but because they are open to the public. Yet, if this measure passes, those records are essentially privatized … to the government.

That is not what we mean, usually, when we say “privatize.”

Using copyright law to protect “thin-​skinned officials,” AB-​2880 would insulate bureaucrats even further from citizen oversight.

The excuse for the law, to help agencies manage their “intellectual property,” is hardly a big concern, except perhaps in one way: trademark infringement. We do not want private businesses to pretend to be state parks or bureaus. But the overreach beyond this core issue goes so far into crazyland that one must question the intent behind it.

And stop it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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transparency, government, copyright, illustration

 

Categories
property rights

Property Owners Victorious

In late April, the Institute for Justice won a smashing judicial victory on behalf of the Community Youth Athletic Center, a boxing gym and haven for local kids, as well as for other property owners in the neighborhood. They hope it’s a knockout blow.

The California Superior Court ruled that National City had no warrant for declaring the area “blighted,” that the city government had violated due process, and that it had violated California’s Public Records Act by failing to provide a private consultant’s documentation of the alleged blight.

Such studies are often blighted themselves — jargon-​ridden fictions concocted to rationalize what the government wants to do solely for other reasons. After the Supreme Court’s egregious Kelo decision, which gave targeted property owners little hope of protecting their property on constitutional grounds from eminent-​domain attacks, property owners in California and other states fought for laws to protect themselves from such baseless designations of “blight.”

Of course, politicians continued to do their darnedest, grabbing stuff that doesn’t belong to them. So the status of the legal protections often must be adjudicated.

CYAC president Clemente Casillas says, “I hope National City does the right thing now and throws in the towel so we can get back to focusing all our attention on helping to grow the kids in our community. The city can have redevelopment, but that has to be done through private negotiation, not by government force.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.