They huddle together

Ever since the passage of Proposition 13, California cities have had to tie their budgets to sales tax receipts. This explains why city officials are such shameless boosters for big box stores, redevelopment zones and auto dealerships - and why the sharp drop in consumer spending reported this month has California's city managers sweating.

The uncertainty of single-source funding did little to curb spending however, especially on police and fire. After all, anti-crime campaigns win elections and police and fire unions know how to sell effective slate mailers to candidates. Like most of us, city councils chose instant gratification over prudence. They signed off on huge pension obligations and salary increases, knowing any pain wouldn't be felt for years to come.

So how will cities contend with falling revenues - as car sales slow, retail dips and redevelopment grinds to a halt? Few voters are clamoring for fewer cops and few cops are willing to take big salary cuts. In Michigan, where the economic meltdown is more advanced, law enforcement agencies are banding together for form "multi-jurisdictional task forces." From the Detroit News:

"The wave of the future is to make the most of what you have by joining forces," said Michigan State Police Detective Sgt. Ken Walker, who served as task force commander at that time. "At the time of the activation, each city contributes their manpower and time and effort. When you get focused people organized, you've got a lot of investigative power."

The story goes on to say there is a nationwide push to increase the number of such task forces. However, the story does not talk about grant funding or seizure laws (one of the reasons law enforcement officials like task forces is it provides opportunities to get federal grants and broadens the territory and gives everyone a share of seized assets). It also ignores questions of oversight and accountability. Unlike a city or county police force that reports to an elected body, task forces often operate under the radar.

Which brings us back to LA Impact, a multi-jurisdictional task force formed by the Los Angeles Police Chiefs Association. In 2004, two open-government experts sued to force LA Impact's governing board to open its meetings and documents to the public. Four years later, the board has hardly budged - in part because no one (media, I'm looking at you) is really paying attention.

Since cop stories are all the rage in the ever-shrinking MediaNews empire, hopefully this trend - if it hits California's shores - will get the notice it deserves.

Bray vs. LA Impact

The Metropolitan News-Enterprise is the first newspaper to talk to Chris Bray about his frustrations with the countywide narcotics task force LA Impact over its foot-dragging in complying with his public records requests. Bray - his latest missive to LA Impact attorney Christy O'Donnell is here - plans to file a complaint with the DA's public integrity division and threatened another lawsuit.

From the MNE story:

A former newspaper reporter who successfully sued to have a task force organized by Los Angeles County police chiefs to coordinate the battle against drug trafficking to open at least some of its meetings to the public over four years ago said yesterday he will ask District Attorney Steve Cooley’s Public Integrity Division to investigate the agency for further violations of the Ralph M. Brown Act.

Chris Bray, who once covered the Los Angeles Interagency Metropolitan Police Apprehension Crime Task Force for the Claremont Courier, also said he may file another lawsuit against the agency.

Bray and open-government activist Richard McKee of Californians Aware sued the agency, popularly known as LA IMPACT, for violating the Brown Act in 2004.

This district’s Court of Appeal ruled that the task force was subject to the act’s requirement that meetings be “open and public,” but Bray told the MetNews the organization is “playing a ridiculous game” to thwart his ability to obtain minutes and agendas from LA Impact Board of Directors meetings.

I'm not impressed by you either

For those of you following the FOIA saga between LA Impact and Chris Bray, here's LA Impact attorney Christy O'Donnell's e-mail response to Bray:

Mr. Bray:

Correspondence has already been drafted to your October 20, 2008 letter and will be sent out via U.S. Mail advising you of your appointment next Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 7:00 am at LA IMPACT, and also addressing your allegations of Brown Act violations which lack merit and are less then professional. Thus, as they are addressed in my correspondence I will not waste my clients money repeating them here.

'I am not impressed by you'

In a letter that's just begging to become an exhibit in a court case, former reporter Chris Bray responds to the foot dragging of LA Impact attorney Christy O'Donnell in filling his request for some basic public records from the agency.

This might be the first time that the countywide narcotics task force has been asked to turn over public documents since Bray and government watchdog Richard McKee won a court order requiring LA Impact to come out of the shadows and comply with California's open-records and open-meetings laws.

Bray writes:

I requested public documents from your client, a public agency. State law gives public agencies ten days to respond to such requests. L.A. Impact received my request -- my second request, by the way -- on September 9, 2008 (see enclosed photocopy of U.S. Postal Service "Domestic Return Receipt," labeled as Document 1). Your letter of October 14 begins, "This letter will confirm our receipt of your correspondence, dated September 8, 2008..." (see enclosed photocopy of your October 14 letter, labeled as Document 2). No explanation for your delayed response follows. Should I wish to argue that L.A. Impact does not comply with the terms of the California Public Records Act, your own letter serves as the plainest evidence of that fact.

-snip-

[O]n Wednesday, October 15, 2008, we exchanged email in which I asked for an appointment this week to review public records at your client's office. You responded at 9:36 a.m. on that day that you would contact your client and arrange such an appointment for me. It is now 8:45 a.m. on Monday, October 20, and I have not heard from you. You had most of the day Wednesday, and all of Thursday and Friday, to arrange an appointment at a public agency to review simple public records that should be easily available.I am requesting an opportunity to review the recent agendas and minutes of a local legislative body, a set of records that any City Clerk in the state would instantly provide to me over the counter without an appointment. This is not hard.

I am not impressed by you. Do your job.

Any reporter who's faced a public agency's clumsy stonewalling will feel a tinge of recognition in reading the entire correspondence between Bray and O'Donnell.

The thin blue line of transparency

Way back when I wrote for newspapers, I reported on a narcotics task force formed by a group of L.A. County police chiefs called LA Impact. The police chiefs met in private to set policy for and distribute funds from task force investigations. Government watchdogs Richard McKee and Chris Bray said the police chiefs - who had expressed an interest in branching out from narcotics to domestic terrorism - had to meet in public. McKee and Bray took the cops to court and the court said the cops were breaking the law.

Flip the calendar forward a few years and Bray, who now teaches history at UCLA, got an itch to see if the police chiefs were still following the law. He sent the LA Impact governing board a letter requesting minutes from past meetings and notification of future meetings (which appear to be being held at the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District building in Santa Fe Springs). Such requests are routinely made of California's city councils and school boards and most comply. LA Impact's lawyers did their best to do the bare minimum.

Bray responds:

Thanks for your prompt reply to my request. I had hoped that LA Impact minutes and agendas were created and stored as Word files, or something similar, and could be emailed as attachments with very little cost or hassle to your client. But I would be happy to spend time in the LA Impact office instead, even if it is a substantial time commitment for us all. If I'll be required to travel to the office to read minutes every time there's a meeting of the Board of Directors, perhaps we can come up with a regular appointment time for those frequent visits. In the meantime, I'd like to schedule any morning next week after nine a.m. to review the requested minutes. I plan to read them carefully and methodically, so I may need to visit the LA Impact office quite a few times in the coming days.

Read all the letters the here.