BILL ANALYSIS
SB 1488
Page 1
Date of Hearing: June 14, 2004
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON UTILITIES AND COMMERCE
Sarah Reyes, Chair
SB 1488 (Bowen) - As Amended: June 9, 2004
SENATE VOTE : Not relevant.
SUBJECT : Public Utilities Commission: public information.
SUMMARY : Requires the California Public Utilities Commission
(CPUC) to initiate a proceeding to review its public disclosure
practices. Specifically, this bill requires CPUC to initiate a
proceeding to review its practices under its electricity
procurement proceeding and it public disclosure rules to ensure
meaningful public participation and open decision making.
EXISTING LAW the California Constitution (Article 1, Section 3)
provides that the people have the right to instruct their
representatives, petition government for redress of grievances,
and assemble freely to consult for the common good.
The following state laws regulate the public's access to
government information:
1)The California Public Records Act (PRA) establishes the right
of every person to inspect and obtain copies of all state and
local government documents and records not exempt from
disclosure. PRA requires specified state and local agencies
to establish written guidelines for accessibility of records,
to post these guidelines at their offices, and to make them
available free of charge to any person requesting that
agency's records.
2)The Ralph M. Brown Act (Brown Act) which governs meetings of
legislative bodies of local agencies (e.g. boards of
supervisors, city councils, school boards) is virtually
identical to the Bagley-Keene Act and requires local
legislative bodies to hold meetings in open forum after public
notice of agenda items. The Brown Act also recognizes the
need, under limited circumstances, for these bodies to meet in
private in order to carry out their responsibilities in the
best interests of the public and provides for specified
exceptions. Both acts (Brown Act & Bagley-Keene) provide that
the covered entities "exist to aid in the conduct of the
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people's business" and that their actions "be taken openly and
that their deliberations be conducted openly."
3)The Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act (Bagley-Keene) requires all
meetings of a state body to be open and public and grants the
right to attend such meetings to all persons, with certain
exceptions. The Bagley-Keene requires these public meetings
to be noticed with an agenda that contains the items of
business that may be acted upon at the meeting. The
Bagley-Keene defines a state body to mean every state board,
commission, or similar multimember body of the state that is
created by statute or required by law to conduct official
meetings and every commission created by executive order. In
addition, the Bagley-Keene excludes from that definition
certain bodies of the Judiciary and Legislature, among other
things.
4)The Legislative Open Records Act (LORA) provides that the
public may inspect legislative records, as defined, and
mandates that committee and floor analyses records be
permanently preserved either in the appropriate committee
office or with the State Archives. LORA declares that "access
to information concerning the conduct of the people's business
by the Legislature is a fundamental and necessary right of
every citizen in this state." The LORA provides for
"nondisclosure" of certain records, including, (1) records
pertaining to pending litigation; (2) preliminary drafts,
notes, or legislative memoranda, except as specified; (3)
personnel, medical, or similar files; (4) communications from
private citizens; (5) records in the custody of or maintained
by the Legislative Counsel; (6) correspondence of and to
individual Legislators and their staff; (7) records of
complaints to or investigations conducted by, or records of
security procedures of, the Legislature; and, (8) records
maintained by the majority and minority caucuses.
5)The Grunsky-Burton Open Meeting Act (Grunsky-Burton) provides
that meetings of a house of the Legislature or a committee
shall be open and public and all persons shall be permitted to
attend the meetings. The Grunsky-Burton permits the
Legislature or a committee thereof to hold closed meetings
solely for any of the following purposes: (1) to consider
certain personnel matters; (2) to consider matters affecting
safety and security; (3) to confer with legal counsel
regarding any litigation matter; and, (4) a caucus of the
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Members of the Senate, the Members of the Assembly, or the
Members of both houses.
6)Establishes a separate statute governing information
disclosure within the Public Utilities Code. The statute
states that no information furnished to CPUC by a public
utility or its affiliates shall be open to public inspection
or made public except on order of CPUC.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown.
COMMENTS :
Purpose of this bill is to require CPUC to initiate a proceeding
to review its information disclosure practices to ensure
meaningful public participation and open decision making. This
comes as a result of an increase amount of information being
redacted by CPUC before disclosure to the public. Currently
CPUC has initiated a process to review the public disclosure
process for information in the long-term electricity procurement
proceeding where numerous parties involved representing both
ratepayers and competitors want greater disclosure for different
reasons. The committee should note that in order to foster
greater access to information deemed sensitive and proprietary
CPUC has developed Procurement Review Groups (PRG) of which
ratepayers sit as representatives to review all documents
relating to an investor owned utilities procurement decisions
that are not disclosed to the public.
Still, since the decisions made by CPUC can affect market
decisions a more thorough review of the public disclosure
practices of the agency would go a long way towards ensuring
that the public and interested parties see process as fair and
open.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Not relevant
Opposition
Not relevant
SB 1488
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Analysis Prepared by : Daniel Kim / U. & C. / (916) 319-2083