Citizen’s Toolkit: California’s Bagley-Keene Act

"the meetings of public bodies and the writings of public officials and agencies shall be open to public scrutiny", and explicitly mandates open meetings for California State agencies, boards, and commissions. The act facilitates accountability and transparency of government activities and protects the rights of citizens to participate in State government deliberations. Similarly, California's Brown Act of 1953 protects citizen rights with regard to open meetings at the county and local government level. Source: Bagley-Keene Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Additional Links: A Handy Guide to the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act 2004

http://www.elkhornsloughctp.org/pubs/bagley_keene.pdf

As part of our yearly distribution of these items on behalf of MoreQuality, a public agency.

http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/GOV/1/2/d3/1/1/9/s11120 § 11122

http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/bagleykeene_meetingact.pdf

Toolkit IRS Form 4506-A - Request for Public Inspection or Copy (Rev. March 2009) of Exempt or Political Organization IRS Form

FPPC - Fair Political Practices Commission http://www.fppc.ca.gov/ 2010 Version of the Political Reform Act of 1974 http://www.fppc.ca.gov/factsheets/Local_gift_travel.pdf ref - http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/GOV/1/9/7/2/s87200

California Public Utilities Commission http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/puc/ California Code of Law

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/index.html

Williamson Act

The California Land Conservation Act of 1965--commonly referred to as the Williamson Act--enables local governments to enter into contracts with private landowners for the purpose of restricting specific parcels of land to agricultural or related open space use. In return, landowners receive property tax assessments which are much lower than normal because they are based upon farming and open space uses as opposed to full market value. Local governments receive an annual subvention of forgone property tax revenues from the state via the Open Space Subvention Act of 1971.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamson_Act

http://www.consrv.ca.gov/dlrp/lca/Pages/Index.aspx Williamson Act - Write an article about it and about what's been going on with it. Write it as a professional policy analyst would.