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.
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!
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.
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.”
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
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
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
