UPDATE: The Berkeley City Council postponed certifying the Berkeley Sunshine Ordinance at the May 15 Council Meeting. The item is expected to be discussed at the May 29 Special Meeting instead so there is still time to sign our petition for a fair and accurate ballot summary.

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How much is democracy worth in Berkeley? Around the world thousands are losing their lives for liberty, but on Tuesday the City Council is poised to bet that $2 million is enough to convince voters to turn their backs on open government.

Agenda Item No. 38 on the May 15 calendar will certify the Berkeley Sunshine Ordinance. In the process, the Council plans to put the following summary on the ballot for an initiative that would ensure that more government records are available to the people, meetings are properly agendized and open to the public, and that the City should be held accountable when it violates this ordinance and existing state open government laws:

CITY OF BERKELEY INITIATIVE ORDINANCE

Shall an ordinance be adopted: enacting new agenda and meetings requirements for the City Council, the Rent Stabilization Board and all 30+ City Commissions, including limits on their ability to respond to emergencies and other time-sensitive issues; increasing disclosure requirements for public records; and creating a new commission with authority to sue the City, at an estimated combined annual cost of $2 million?

The city is required to provide an impartial summary of the ballot measure, but despite the fact that the term sunshine has been commonly used to describe such legislation for more than 50 years, the summary neither uses the word sunshine nor the term “open government.”

"I read the staff report and the ballot question,” Councilmember Jesse Arreguin told the Berkeley Sunshine campaign in an e-mail. “Not only does it cite the $2-million-dollar price tag, which I think is over-inflated, it presents the measure in a negative way and is written to ensure that voters will not approve it. I don’t think its impartial at all.”

The $2 million dollars is laughable. San Francisco, a city and county with many more government functions and seven times the population of Berkeley has determined that its sunshine laws only cost the city $900,000 per year. This is nothing more than an effort by city bureaucrats to scare the people of Berkeley into voting against a more democratic government. Please help ensure your neighbors are given accurate information on the ballot by signing the petition we’ve created at berkeleysunshine.org. We will deliver the petition at the May 15 council meeting. Please also consider writing your council members and speaking at public comment on this issue. 

Summer is still three months away, but it is time to think about sunshine. National Sunshine Week is March 11-17, and in Berkeley we have a chance to pass the strongest Sunshine law in the country. This ordinance would not govern the sun's rays, which light up our homes and illuminate our yards, but would instead mandate that sunshine must flow into our city government and ensure that our politicians and their employees cannot hide in the shadows. 

In 1909, Florida was one of the first states to adopt an open meetings law, but it wasn't until the mid 1950s that most other states began to follow suit. In 1967, the Sunshine State tied its own state nickname to the cause through Florida's Government-in-the-Sunshine Law. Within ten years the U.S. Congress had passed its own Government in the Sunshine Act, and there was some form of open government law in every state. 

But open meeting laws are only the first step, and most of these early laws allowed governments to violate them without any possibility of penalties. Without an enforceable mechanism built into these sunshine laws, the government is able to keep anything secret that it chooses and there is almost nothing citizens can do to intervene. 

In a paper published through the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communication, Punishment for Shade: An Analysis of Penalties and Remedies for Violations of Open Meetings Laws Across the Country, Adrianna C. Rodriguez, a graduate student, and Dr. Laurence B. Alexander, a Professor of Journalism, establish that Sunshine laws can only be effective if they cannot be ignored. 

The move to bring sunshine to our local Berkeley government started around 2001. After five years — and a lot of reminders to our council of their supposed commitment to open government — they finally held a public workshop in 2006. As a result of that workshop the council called upon the League of Women Voters to organize a committee of citizens who would write a proposed sunshine law.