SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Under pressure from the California Legislature, the Judicial Council unanimously passed an open meetings rule Thursday that would open up many historically closed committee meetings. But the overall balance of the rule still favors closed committee doors, said press and open government advocates.
"We started this effort at the urging of the Legislature and the governor's office last summer," said Justice Harry Hull, who helped draft the rule. "As we talked, I was persuaded a broader rule would benefit the branch."
Other council members were not so persuaded and voted "aye" with great reluctance.
Brian Walsh, the presiding judge in San Jose, said he was "all for openness" but the council was already open enough. His comments also acknowledged what has been an open secret for years, that the advisory committees are heavily influenced by staff from the Administrative Office of the Courts.
"They consist of staff and essentially user groups, not Judicial Council members, who then work up issues to present essentially as staff reports to the voting body," said Walsh. "To require opening up such staff functions, I believe is inappropriate."
He said he only voted in favor of the rule "not because it is necessary for appropriate democratic transparency -- we already have that -- but because if we don't pass this rule, those in Sacramento who continue to misunderstand how our branch functions will impose something even more inappropriate."
A catch-all justification for continuing to close meetings has been that open discussion might compromise a judge's ethics. But that justification was rejected by the former head of the ethics committee for the California Judges Association
"I know of no discipline ever imposed upon a judge who has made public commentary about a pending or impending case within the context of a governmental or judicial advisory body," said Judge Julie Conger who has taught ethics to judges since 1990 and twice chaired the ethics committee for the California Judges Association.
Open government advocates said the rule passed on Thursday fell short of what the Legislature intended and what is needed to bring sunshine into the decisions that affect the courts and the people of California.
"Like with any bureaucracy, the public is entitled to know what's going on and the more that the bureaucracy reveals to the public, the greater will be the public's trust in the court system," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition. "These rules gives them excessive discretion to avoid transparency by going into executive session for all sorts of reasons."
The muscle behind the push for the rule came from legislators who included a mandate to open the council's myriad committees in a trailer bill attached to the 2013 budget. Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the bill after lobbying from Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who argued that the judiciary should be allowed to write its own rule.
The chief justice then appointed the heads of the Judicial Council's five most powerful committees, the internal committees, to draft it.
"I knew three years ago we talked about opening meetings, but we never quite finished that conversation because we were hit with so many financial crisis. We just never got around to it," said Cantil-Sakauye during Thursday's council meeting. "As for all the comments today I agree with all them. Every single one of them."
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