The cause of government transparency finally broke through to the popular zeitgeist this year. It wasn’t an investigative journalism exposé or a civil rights lawsuit that did it, but a light-hearted sitcom about a Taiwanese American family set in Orlando, Florida, in the late 1990s. In a January episode of ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, […]
transparency
Posted inNews (NCJ)
California Lawmakers Negotiating Law Aimed at Reducing Police Shootings
Jamilia Land walked out of a meeting in the state Capitol feeling optimistic that 2019 may be the year California changes the law to try to reduce the number of people killed by police. It’s personal for her. Land is a family friend of Stephon Clark, the unarmed man Sacramento police shot dead last year […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
New Fairgrounds Lease Leaves the Public in the Dark
In case you missed it, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors decided Oct. 16 that you don’t get to have input into how the county fairgrounds are operated or how public funds are spent to maintain them. The board voted 4-1, with Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson dissenting, to approve an eight-year lease with the […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
County of Humboldt, Please End the Madness in Ferndale
In a few weeks, the fairgrounds in Ferndale will be awash with the smell of fry oil and children’s gleeful screams as the 122nd annual Humboldt County Fair gets underway. Meanwhile, the Humboldt County Fair Association — the nonprofit that runs the fair — and the county of Humboldt have been meeting behind closed doors […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
North Coast Lawmakers Question Trump’s Motives with Russia, Introduce Candidate Vetting Legislation
North Coast lawmakers announced this morning a pair of efforts in direct response to President Donald Trump’s widely criticized remarks in Helsinki, Finland, Monday during a press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which he refrained from criticizing the Russian dictator and cast doubt on whether the country interfered in the 2016 presidential election. […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Sundberg's Chances to Take the Fifth and Why it Takes So Long to Count the Votes
By the time this paper hits newsstands, it will have been a week since Election Day and a fifth of the county’s electorate remains on edge, awaiting the results of a nail-biter of a supervisorial race currently separated by just 33 votes. With the final and generally definitive post-election tally at least a week away, […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Little Sunshine in Congress, State Legislature
“The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist they may retain control […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Recognizing the Year’s Worst in Government Transparency
Government transparency laws like the Freedom of Information Act exist to enforce the public’s right to inspect records so we can all figure out what the heck is being done in our name and with our tax dollars. But when a public agency ignores, breaks or twists the law, your recourse varies by jurisdiction. In […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Culture Change
Mark Rowley has spent just about all of his 62 years in Willow Creek and says he’s never been tempted to move. That is, until now. Why — after having raised two kids and trading one successful business for another — would Rowley consider leaving the valley his family has called home for three generations? […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Roll the Tapes. All of Them.
It really shouldn’t be this hard. This week’s cover story examining the prosecution of Adam Laird is the culmination of years of work. But that’s not to say the story took particularly long to write or even to research. No, instead, the more than two years of work invested in this story were spent fighting […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
Is This Criminal Assault?
It’s been almost four years since the Eureka Police Department and the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office held a rare joint press conference on April 17, 2013 to announce they’d arrest an EPD sergeant on suspicion of assaulting a 14-year-old during an arrest. Four months earlier, shortly before midnight on Dec. 6, 2012, EPD received […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
McGuire Looks to Make ‘Transparency Great Again’
As members of the Electoral College set about casting their votes today, two state senators — including the North Coast’s Mike McGuire — announced they would introduce legislation requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns to appear on the California ballot. The legislation, slated to be introduced in January, is the second to be […]