Remembering Richard McKee

In case you haven't already heard, Richard McKee died Saturday. McKee, an open government activist who lived in La Verne, was well-known in Claremont, having taken the City to court a few times during the Glenn Southard administration.

Just last month, McKee had an opinion piece in the Daily Bulletin (now sequestered behind the Bulletin's pay wall) reminding readers of the responsibility each of us bears in a participatory democracy and of the risks we take in shirking those duties.

McKee, who taught chemistry at Pasadena City College, was a citizen activist in the purest sense, and, as former Claremont Courier reporter Gary Scott notes, we all have McKee to thank for our access to local government records:

McKee fought every day to ensure California lived up to a simple and obvious idea. He believed the public has a right to know what the government it elected was doing....

It was a simple idea, and yet McKee spent more than a decade fighting nearly identical battles in city after city, county after county, as craven government officials decided it was easier to conceal than to reveal. The salary scandal in the City of Bell - the one that won the Los Angeles Times a Pulitzer - shows what happens when people like McKee are not around. He not only fought his battles, but he fought countless battles on behalf of people who did not know they had rights.

We first saw McKee when he was active with the California First Amendment Coalition and then later when he, CFAC general counsel Terry Francke, and others broke off and formed Californians Aware, another open government activist group.

La Verne Online has an obit for McKee, and it reminds us that his activism did carry a personal cost:

While most of McKee’s efforts were focused on open government education, to protect the public’s rights, he also litigated 14 successful open government and First Amendment lawsuits, often representing himself. KPFK radio dubbed him “John Q. Citizen.” KCET’s “Life & Times Tonight” called him “the citizen who won’t shut up and go away.” The Times characterized him as “the scourge of public agencies across the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles County” who “walks softly and carries a big stick.” The Sacramento Bee christened him “Mr. Sunshine,” a man with “a head for the law, a heart for justice and a nose for government officials with secrets.”

His crusade at time took great personal and financial toll. After suing the Orange Unified School District Board for alleged violations of the Brown Act in 2007, McKee as the losing plaintiff was responsible for paying thousands in attorney’s fees and court costs, forcing McKee to take a lien on his home and suffer garnishment of his wages.

Whether you realize it or not, you owe a great deal to Richard McKee, and you can best honor that debt by getting involved in the governance of your city, your school district, your water district and holding them accountable whenever they stonewall you on information that is rightly yours.

It's become fashionable to complain about too much or too little government on all levels, but 99% of the complaints come from people sitting on sofas in the comforts of their living rooms while the 1% represented by the likes of McKee actually do the heavy lifting. Let's get off our collective lazy duffs and lend a hand.

Just Between You and Me...

As we Insiders know all too well, at every level government the people we elect and the bureaucrats they appoint or hire love to keep things secret and often will do anything to limit public access to documents. Federal, state or local, they will seek to keep information hidden - much of it rightfully public information.

Ironically, United States vs. Reynolds, the 1953 US Supreme Court case that recognized the State Secrets Privilege, was based on a false secrecy claim used by lawyers for the federal government who were defending a lawsuit brought by the widows of three RCA engineers killed on a Air Force B-29 that crashed in Waycross, Georgia. The federal attorneys sought to block the release of the accident report for the B-29 claiming that its release would endanger national security.

By 2000, the accident report had made its way to the Internet, where it was found by Judy Loether, the daughter of one of the RCA engineers. The report turned out to contain no state secrets, but it did contain information about the particular B-29 that crashed, as well as the plane's maintenance record. That information supported the widows' complaints and would have been a key to any resulting civil trial.

(You can learn a little more about this by listening to Act II of an episode of This American Life from June, 2009, concerning the origins of institutions - check around the 27:30 mark).

If the federal government is willing to falsely invoke the States Secrets Privilege, imagine what happens at the local level, which is often subject to much less public scrutiny. As scandals in Bell, Upland, San Bernardino County, or even at the CalPERS governing board (see the front page of today's LA Times) have shown, if the public isn't privy to information, elected and appointed officials can find opportunities for malfeasance of all sorts.

A reader turned us on to an opinion piece in last Sunday's Daily Bulletin by open government activist Richard McKee (photo, left). McKee wrote that voters have a duty to keep watch on their local officials, and reporters have an obligation to find the information the public needs to make informed decisions. He also noted that the problem of staying apprised of what's going on in government has become exponentially more difficult thanks to the proliferation of government agencies:

The sad news is that this all happens because "we the people" don't pay any attention; a willful ignorance amply facilitated by news media that fail to keep us informed. The usual practice is for the electorate to vote for those telling us what we want to hear, whether it's for or against an incoming Walmart, funding for parks, promoting public transportation, refurbishing schools or some other hot topic; then we return to ignoring local government as soon as we leave the polling place.

And this problem has been made more difficult by local government's eagerness to create more and more public agencies. What do you know of your local sanitation district, or the community service, recreation, vector control, flood, water, airport, harbor, irrigation, public transportation, hospital, waste management, utilities or cemetery districts? How about your council of governments, air quality management or local agency formation commission?

Every one of these public boards and commissions employs staff and sets their compensation. But it's not only the salaries and obvious benefits, it's the pensions - and boy, are they something!

McKee is absolutely right in pointing out the multiple layers of local government that are technically subject to open government laws, but which in practice conduct their daily operations without much public input at all. The Claremont Unified School District, for example, is free to routinely ignore requests for public documents about such things as the district's finances, and no one notices or cares until the district comes, hat in hand, asking the voters to approve another overpriced bond.

Or who, really, keeps an eye on the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, which has dole out tens of millions of dollars with very little real oversight? To take the RMC example, a 2009 state audit found a number of problems with the RMC's handling of the public funds:

The Conservancy Has Not Exercised Adequate Fiduciary Oversight of Bond Funds

The audit identified a significant number of recurring audit findings from 2006 related to the Conservancy and its joint powers entity, the Watershed Conservation Authority (Authority). We also found instances of questionable practices and expenditures at the Authority. Collectively,these issues demonstrate the Conservancy’s inadequate fiduciary oversight of bond funds....

The current audit determined the Authority commingled bond funds with general operating funds, and inappropriately used these funds for ineligible costs; and the Authority has not completed annual financial audits.

Yet, all the public sees are headlines about the RMC awarding cities like Claremont millions of dollars to build projects like Padua Park or to buy open space or to fund studies of the pet water projects of the City's dilettantes. Because we don't look beyond the headlines, agencies like the RMC operate with impunity and can easily become nothing more slush funds to help promote the political prospects of its friends.

Incredibly, the RMC received a similar audit in 2006 and apparently ignored a number of findings. The RMC was able to do so because very few people really care. If we repeat the RMC's conduct across the myriad of state and local agencies Richard McKee alluded to, it's easy to see how we Californians ended up in our present fiscal mess.

Ultimately, it's up to you, Mr. and Ms. Voter, to own the problems your inattentiveness beget.

Open Government Activist Pressing LA County on Affordable Housing Rule

The Daily Bulletin reported yesterday that Richard McKee, president emeritus of an open government group called Californians Aware, is looking into the way a Los Angeles County commission allowed unelected staffers to change county rules governing how money for affordable housing projects is awarded.

You may recall that Claremont's affordable housing project at Base Line Rd. and Towne Ave. died primarily because it failed to qualify for $2.5 million dollars in county funds that the developer and the city needed to complete the project. The city didn't get the county money because the county's Community Development Commission earlier this year created a new rule that prohibits county affordable housing funds from being granted to projects within 500 feet of a major highway.

McKee, an open government activist from La Verne who was a thorn in Claremont's side on several occasions in years past, is concerned that the policy change should have been made in public by the commission and believes that the change was politically motivated. The Bigham article said:

In his letter to the county, dated April 29, McKee requested all agendas, back-up materials and minutes to public meetings held to discuss the 500-foot rule.

He also seeks the specific legal authority used by the commission to make the decision on a staff level. McKee said the county may not have the authority to establish strict limitations on affordable-housing funding, because the bulk of the money comes from the federal government and is merely distributed by the county.

Most comprehensively, McKee seeks "all writings ... exchanged between and among (commission) staff and supervisorial offices, providing information and/or seeking input on, objections to, or approval of the 500-foot rule."

By law, the county has 10 business days to respond to McKee's request.

Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor (seen at right) is quoted in the article as saying that she thinks affordable housing opponents put pressure on LA County Supervisor Michael Antonovich's office to get the rule change made.

In making her claim, Taylor, as is her wont, provides no reasons for her accusation, she just puts it out there as fact. It may or may not be true, but the important thing is, Queen Ellen believes it.

Taylor and her friends, as we've pointed out before, probably give Claremonters credit for more power and influence than they deserve. Taylor and her friends, who had pushed the Base Line Rd. project despite some very obvious problems, have claimed in the past that they represent the majority of Claremonter and that the project opponents are a small group of NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard) who should be ignored.

So which is it? Small, inconsequential nothings from a tiny city of 35,000, or all-powerful political animals capable of moving a county of 10 million residents? Make up your minds, dunderheads - you can't have it both ways.

Taylor also continues to ignore the 10-year study released in 2007 by the USC Keck School of Medicine, which found that children growing up within 500 meters (not feet) of a major highway have a greatly increased chance of growing up with impaired lung development. So, Taylor and her friends would have us believe that this Claremont cabal (or are they NIMBY's?) is so omniscient that over 10 years ago it manipulated USC School of Medicine researchers into fabricating a study involving thousands of children, years of work, and large amounts of grant money, all to defeat a project of less than 50 units in little Claremont? Right.

The greatest irony of all is McKee's involvement in this. Remember, McKee's prior organization, the California First Amendment Coalition, back in 2000 awarded Claremont a Black Hole Award "For its campaign of intimidation, disinformation and unlawful secrecy, often in response to criticism of official policy, designed to reduce the public's knowledge of and involvement in their local government."

According to a CFAC press release:

Claremont was cited for:

* its refusal to disclose records relating to a lawsuit settlement;
* its protests contrary to fact that a federal court order precluded disclosure,
* its short-lived proposal to have mental health professionals standing by to assess the threat level posed by citizen speakers at public meetings;
* its city manager's disclosure of the criminal records of a man, in order to discredit him, who had called for an investigation of the death of his nephew, shot by police officers;
* its use of council committees to hold unannounced meetings on a variety of matters; and
* its refusal to allow citizens, during a permitted parade, to hand out leaflets to curbside spectators.

And in many ways this sort of secrecy still goes on. All you have to do is know one of Taylor's fellow Claremont League of Women Voter members, Helaine Goldwater or Judy Wright for instance, and they'll create a "citizen" task force just for you to give the imprimatur of "public process" to whatever stupid project (see Claremont's trolley) they've ginned up over drinks Friday night at Judy's house. Oh, you don't like it? Why didn't you attend the meeting?

Irony, irony, thy name is Taylor.