By Henry K. Lee
The San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO - The salaries and hiring and termination dates of government workers, including police officers, are public information and cannot be kept secret, a divided state Supreme Court ruled today in two related cases.
The California Public Records Act requires the state’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to disclose the names, departments, hiring and termination dates of California law-enforcement officers, the court ruled in one case that began in Sacramento County.
In the other case, involving the city of Oakland, the court said the public-records act also requires the disclosure of names and salaries of public employees making at least $100,000 a year.
Both cases involved news media requests for the disclosure of government personnel information.
“I’m very pleased,” said Karl Olson, an attorney representing the Contra Costa Times in the Oakland case. “I think it’s a major victory for the public’s right to know. The court looked at whether the public interest in seeing how government’s money is spent outweighs the assertions of privacy that have been made by the public employee unions, and they correctly concluded the public’s interest is paramount.”
In the Sacramento County case, a state appeals court had ruled that the information sought by the Los Angeles Times couldn’t be disclosed because it was available only from personnel records. The appeals court ruled those records were not public documents.
The Supreme Court disagreed.
“We find no well-established social norm that recognizes a need to protect the identity of all peace officers,” said the ruling by Chief Justice Ronald George. “Peace officers operate in the public realm on a daily basis and identify themselves to the members of the public with whom they deal.”
However, did the court did note that the state commission for police-officer training could argue that certain categories of officers should be exempt from having their information released “because the safety or efficacy of the officers would be jeopardized.”
The high court sent the case back to Sacramento County Superior Court to consider how certain officers, such as those who work in an undercover capacity, could argue that they would be harmed if their information was released.
But Olson said today that he doubted an undercover officer would come forward, state his or her name in a public forum and risk being publicly identified in such a fashion.
The commission had argued that releasing officers’ names to the media could enable people hostile toward law enforcement to find their homes and harass them. “It offered no evidence that such a scenario is more than speculative, or even that it is feasible,” George wrote.
Justice Joyce Kennard said while she agreed that the names of officers should be released, she didn’t believe their employing agencies and dates of hiring and termination should be disclosed because those facts are part of confidential personnel files.
In dissent, Justice Ming Chin said he believed officers and their families could be threatened by release of the information.
In Oakland case, the Contra Costa Times sued the city in 2004 after officials refused to release government payroll information as they had in the past. Local 21 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers appealed when lower courts sided with the newspaper.
The high court agreed with the media. “Openness in government is essential to the functioning of a democracy,” George wrote.
Justices Kennard, Chin and Chin said they disagreed with the majority in some respects. Chin said he didn’t believe officers’ names should be disclosed if someone made a request linked only to salaries. But if the requester had an officer’s name and asked for disclosure of his or her salary, that information could be released, Chin said.
Copyright 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.