Californians could be sued, charged $88 per hour for asking questions of state government under crazy new bill

Transparency advocates are enraged over a sneaky change to a California bill that would make it harder to get details on what government agencies are doing — and could even haul people seeking public records to court.News publishers and other First Amendment supporters had already opposed Assembly Bill 1821 by Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco (D), which initially just sought to extend the timeline for when government entities, such as city halls or state agencies, needed to respond to a request for public records.But Pacheco adjusted her measure so that steep fees can be charged for the time staff spends to find publicly available records: an administrative fee of $22.35 per hour and a “professional fee” of $66.26 per hour, both subject to cost-of-living increases.Not only that, under the newest version of the bill, if a government believes the record requester has “malicious intent,” it can ask a court to make that determination and put the request on hold pending a court decision.

The pro-free speech nonprofit First Amendment Coalition blasted the new language and claimed obtaining government records would cost much more.Currently, agencies may generally only charge for copying costs.

But the “malicious intent” provision that allows the government to take someone to court is particularly dangerous, claimed David Snyder, the coalition’s executive director.“It would be easily weaponized by agencies seeking to thwart transparency and accountability, as has already happened elsewhere in the country,” he said.“For decades, California law has been clear that state and local agencies cannot sue records requesters.”A spokesperson for Pacheco told The Post that the bill is designed to help small government entities like city and county governments — who support the legislation — handle unreasonable records requests.For example, counties have pointed to a case in late 2021 in early 2022 in which a requester sought records between El Dorado County...