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Supreme Court: Personal Cell Phones Subject to PRA Requests

City of San Jose v. Superior Court of Santa Clara County (California Supreme Court Case No. S218066) (Issued on March 2, 2017)

Are communications about government matters sent through a public official’s personal email account subject to disclosure under the Public Records Act (PRA)? The City of San Jose (City) argued that such communications are not “public records” because they are not within the City’s custody or control. The Supreme Court disagreed.

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AB 887: Guidance on Peace Officer Investigations

AB 887 was introduced by Assembly Member Cooper (D-Sacramento) on February 16, 2017. AB 887 amends the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act (PSOPBR) as follows: Government Code section 3303. … (c) The public safety officer under investigation shall be informed of the nature of the investigation prior to any interrogation. For this purpose, the officer shall be informed of the following: (1) The time and date of any incident at issue. (2) The location of any incident at issue (3) The internal affairs case number, if any. (4) The title of any alleged violation. (5) A brief summary…

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The New Friedrichs case: Janus v AFSCME

Mark Janus et al v. AFSCME et al (7th Cir.) (Docket No. 16-3638) Last year everyone’s attention was focused on the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (Friedrichs) case. At issue was the Supreme Court’s 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education which sanctioned the collection of mandatory agency fees in the public sector. After oral argument in January 2016, almost all commentators agreed that the Supreme Court was likely to overturn its precedent in Abood. That all changed with the passing of Justice Scalia which resulted in the Supreme Court affirming the Friedrich’s…

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PERB Issues 2015-16 Annual Report

PERB has released its annual report for fiscal year 2015-2016. (The report is available here.)  Here is my annual summary of the statistics in the report: Unfair Practice Charges 652 unfair practice charges (UPCs) were filed in fiscal year 2015-16. In fiscal year 2014-2015, there were 695 UPCs. This means fiscal year 2015-16 saw a 6.2% decrease in UPCs compared to the prior year. The largest decrease was under the Dills Act which saw a 26.4% decrease in UPCs (53 versus 72 in 2014-15). EERA saw a 13.2% decrease in UPCs (236 versus 272 in 2014-15). In contrast, HEERA saw a slight increase…

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The State of Factfinding under the MMBA

County of Riverside v. PERB (2016) 246 Cal.App.4th 20, review denied (July 13, 2016) and San Diego Housing Commission v. PERB (2016) 246 Cal.App.4th 1, review denied (July 13, 2016) For those of you who haven’t heard, the fight over whether the MMBA requires factfinding over single issues is over (at least for now). In a prior post, I discussed the two court of appeal decisions that issued on March 30, 2016 and ruled in PERB’s favor. Both employers filed petitions for review with the California Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court denied review in both cases on July 13,…

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