The LA Times op-ed page has weighed in on Prof. Richard Sander’s fight to obtain information from the California State Bar, describing the bar’s denial as “indefensible.”

I’ve focused on the fact that the bar is claiming that State Bar records – unlike any other public agency records or court records – are not subject to California and common law public access rights. As noted in the comments to my last post, the Bar has also trotted out that venerable war horse of an argument long-used by recalcitrant public agencies trying to avoid transparency: “The request calls for a compilation, and that’s too much work.” This, in a day where responding likely requires spending five minutes setting up a query in the Access or SQL database holding the data.

My concern is government transparency, and it’s frustrating to see this politically-driven fight potentially lead to a decision that limits public access in CA. The opponents of Sander’s work would be far better served fighting his conclusions in a more direct – and scientific – manner. Instead they’ve chosen to try to throttle him from even gathering evidence, neatly ceding the moral high ground and giving Sander a PR bonanza to boot. Let’s hope their zeal to fight this request doesn’t set back the work California has done to date in making state government open and accessible.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 1:13 pm by Josh King, VP of Business Development and General Counsel and is filed under Josh King Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.