Yee honors McKee by putting his name on bill

McKee

The CalAware website reports that state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, has amended his SB8 to bring openness to foundations supporting state universities and colleges “The Richard McKee Transparency Act of 2011” to honor the champion of open government who died April 23. McKee was a co-founder and first president of Californians Aware, a non-lawyer whose efforts to bring sunshine to local government were unrivaled in their frequency and success.

Yee gets death threats after criticizing Limbaugh

State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco who has introduced bills to expand press freedom, is receiving death threats after asking Rush Limbaugh to apologize for mocking the Chinese language.

One fax received by Yee showed a graphic of an American flag adorned pickup truck dragging a noose.

The faxes that were sent to Yee’s office today also state (with misspellings):

FIGHTING The Marxist Nigger Thug Hussein Obama & Fish Head Leeland Yee To: JoBama Rectum Sniffing Moron LEELAND LEE Achtung! Fish Head Leeland Lee. Rush Limbaugh will kick your Chink ass and expose you for the fool you are. Without exceptions, Marxists are enemies of the United States Constitution! Death to all Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!

“It is quite disturbing that such racist sentiment still exists in our country,” said Yee. “As I have said in the past, it is unfortunate acts like these that demonstrate why we must continue to be vigilant against hate and intolerance. Such vitriol has no place within our political discourse or anywhere in our society.”

The expletive-laden faxes contain graphics and language similar to messages Yee receive in April 2010 after he called for Sarah Palin’s speaking fee at California State University to be disclosed. The Pima County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona contacted Yee regarding the April faxes and a possible connection to faxes found during the investigation surrounding the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

UC Regents may change media policy

The UC Board of Regents next week will likely to toss out a long-standing policy restricting public access to its meetings, and to affirm the public's right to record, videotape or photograph proceedings, the Chronicle reports.

The board has a policy that only accredited journalists can record its meetings, which prevented filmmaker Ric Chavez from covering a July 14 meeting. The revised policy would allow anyone to tape regents' meetings as long as the activity is not disruptive.

State Sen. Leland Yee and a journalists' group intervened, calling Chavez' rejection a violation of California's open meeting law. The meeting where the board is expected to change its policy is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 15, at UC Mission Bay in San Francisco.

Bill to seal autopsies advances

The San Diego Union Tribune reports that the California Senate on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved legislation (SB982) that would allow parents of murdered children to seal autopsy reports and photographs despite the objections of Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco.

Yee (pictured) cast the lone dissenting vote, saying autopsy reports are “the only source of information for the public to know how someone died. ... This bill would make it nearly impossible for the press to provide oversight of a government agency.”

Terry Francke, co-founder of the open government advocacy group Californians Aware, said coroners already routinely refuse to release criminally related reports and “the court of appeal has held that they need not be” distributed. Also, all evidence presented to juries in homicide cases are public, under the constitution, he said.

“They are kept transparent because just as justice delayed is justice denied, justice unseen is justice uncertain,” Francke told the Union Tribune.

The bill, which now moves to the Assembly, stems from the slayings of San Diego County teenagers Chelsea King and Amber Dubois, whose autopsy reports have yet to be released.

San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis is pushing Senate Bill 982 to seal autopsy reports. “The community was traumatized,” she told the Union Tribune in an earlier interview. “They don’t want to hear the details any more than they already have.”

• Also read: LA Times editorial, "Bill to seal autopsy reports is misguided"

Student paper fights for its independence

The San Matean, the student newspaper at the College of San Mateo, said in an editorial Wednesday that it is concerned that the school has plans to interfere with the paper's content. Last spring, the paper obtained a document by a faculty committee proposing that faculty members edit the paper to make it is something the school could be proud of.

The paper has submitted public records requests to President Michael Claire to obtain more information about the college's plans for the student-run newspaper. The paper said its first request for memos, e-mails and other documents was ignored for two months. A follow-up letter resulted in the release of information which had previously been available, but none of memos or e-mails. Now, Claire is talking to legal counsel about what information he has to release to the paper.

Keeping an eye on the situation is The Student Press Law Center, the California Newspaper Publishers Association and Adam Keigwin, Chief of Staff for State Senator Leland Yee.

The paper quotes Keigwin as saying, ""The (open records) law is there for good reason and the administration has to comply."

Bill protects school papers from censorship

State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Mateo, has introduced a bill, SB 1370, to prohibit schools and colleges from retaliating against employees for standing up for students' free speech rights. Yee's bill is intended to stop schools from shutting down student papers or dismissing journalism advisers in order to clamp down on unfavorable coverage. Yee has documented eight cases in the state in which journalism advisers were either dismissed or reassigned after being confronted by school officials who chafed at embarrassing or revelatory stories, the Mercury News reports.

Bill stops censorship of college newspapers

The state Senate Education Committee on Thursday (June 21) unanimously approved legislation authored by Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, prohibiting censorship of college student newspapers.

In a June 2005 decision, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court ruled that a college administrator in Illinois could require student editors of a state university’s newspaper to submit articles for prior review before the newspaper would be sent to the printer for publication. On Feb. 21, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the decision.

The case, known as Hosty v. Carter, prompted Christine Helwick, general counsel for the California State University system, to send a memo to presidents at each CSU campus that read, “The [Hosty] case appears to signal that CSU campuses may have more latitude than previously believed to censor the content of subsidized student newspapers.”

Assemblyman Yee's bill, AB 2581, would ensure such free speech protections for college publications, specifically prohibiting censorship of student newspapers at any UC, CSU, or community college, according to a press release from Yee's office. The bill would also prohibit any college, university or community college officials from disciplining a student who engages in speech or press activities.

“AB 2581 is essential in order for student newspapers in California to have the free speech protections they deserve,” Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, said in the release. “Although we will continue to push for the Supreme Court to validate the rights of college newspapers, in California we are taking the proactive steps to make sure similar censorship does not occur at our colleges and universities.”

AB 2581 must be approved by the full Senate before heading to the Governor’s desk.