CA Legislative Public Database Monopolized by Government Agency

The California First Amendment Coalition (CFAC) and MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that illuminates the connection between money and politics, filed a lawsuit today against the Office of Legislative Counsel of California for denying MAPLight.org's freedom-of-information requests. The intent of the lawsuit is to force the Office of Legislative Counsel to make the state's records of bills and votes in the California Legislature available in electronic database format for use in MAPLight.org California, a free online database that shows the connection between special-interest campaign contributions and legislator votes. "The California government works for the taxpayers," said Daniel Newman, MAPLight.org's executive director. "California may not keep its database of basic democratic information hidden from the public." "The Office of Legislative Counsel is obviously afraid that release of the legislative database to MAPLight.org will make it too easy for voters to connect financial contributions by special interests to specific votes and other accommodating actions by legislators," said Peter Scheer, executive director of CFAC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to free speech and government transparency. "And legislators should be worried. But fear of embarrassment is hardly a basis for withholding government records from public view. Just the opposite." California Legislative data is currently available to the public in a text-based format on the California Legislative Information website. This current format is suitable only for viewing and printing. What MAPLight.org is requesting is copies of the database records used to create the website. These database records would allow searching for how a member votes, analysis of trends in voting and in bill topics, analysis of patterns of campaign contributions and votes to track special-interest influence, and many more valuable civic uses.