Court Restricts Access to Governor’s Calendar : Secrecy: Ruling says list of appointments may be kept from public. Three justices decry decision.

The state Supreme Court, limiting public access to governmental records, ruled Monday that the governor may refuse to disclose his appointment calendars listing the people he has met on official matters.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court rejected an attempt by the Los Angeles Times to obtain the daily, weekly and monthly calendars and schedules of former Gov. George Deukmejian.

The justices said that forcing Deukmejian to turn over the lists would interfere with the deliberative process of government--and, by revealing details of his travel, jeopardize the governor’s security. The public interest in non-disclosure outweighed that of disclosure, the court said.

“Access to a broad array of opinions and the freedom to seek all points of view, to exchange ideas and to discuss policies in confidence, is essential to effective governance in a representative democracy,” Justice Armand Arabian wrote for the majority.

Deukmejian left office last January but the newspaper continued its bid to obtain the records. Monday’s ruling applies not only to those documents but could affect future requests made of Gov. Pete Wilson or, by implication, other public officials, attorneys said.

In dissent, Justice Joyce L. Kennard contended that disclosure would reveal only the fact of gubernatorial meetings--not the contents of what was said--and thus would not impede the deliberative process. “The public’s right to know what public officials are doing provides ‘a heavy and constant weight’ in favor of disclosure,” Kennard wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Allen E. Broussard.

Justice Stanley Mosk also dissented, warning that the theories underlying the majority’s opinion could extend secrecy from the governor’s office to throughout the executive branches of state and local government. “If we are not to be discriminatory, the secrecy pit is bottomless,” Mosk said.

Rex S. Heinke of Los Angeles, a lawyer for The Times, said the impact would be far-reaching. “No state or local official in California will let the public look at his or her calendar,” the attorney said. “They will be able to conceal from the public who they meet with, who lobbies them, who influences them and how they perform their public duty.”

State Deputy Atty. Gen. Ted W. Prim, who represented Deukmejian, welcomed the ruling, adding that “it will please the current governor, as well.”

The court majority, Prim said, had properly recognized that disclosing “the mere fact of who the governor is speaking to would have a chilling effect on his ability to seek a divergent set of opinions.”

At issue in the case were provisions of the California Public Records Act, a law enacted in 1968 and modeled after the federal Freedom of Information Act. The aim of the legislation was to widen public access to governmental records. But the law also recognized the need for confidentiality, providing exceptions for “correspondence” to and from the governor and his staff. Public agencies and officers also could refuse disclosure when it was in the “public interest.”

The dispute arose in 1988 when Paul Jacobs, a reporter for The Times, asked to see Deukmejian’s appointment schedules, calendars and other documents listing official daily activities back to his inauguration in 1983.

The governor refused the request, citing the act’s exceptions for correspondence and confidentiality in the public interest. The data requested by The Times contained information compiled by staff members and distributed to key employees to keep them informed of Deukmejian’s whereabouts, the governor said. Releasing those details, including airport departure and arrival gates, could jeopardize his security, the governor said.

The Times filed suit, seeking an injunction releasing the requested data. A Sacramento Superior Court judge refused to issue the order, citing the governor’s concerns for security and confidentiality. A state appeals court reversed that decision.

The majority in Monday’s 4-3 ruling was formed by four Deukmejian appointees to the high court: Arabian, Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas and Justices Edward A. Panelli and Marvin Baxter. The minority included one Deukmejian appointee, Kennard--along with Mosk, named by former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, and Broussard, selected by former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown.

Lawyers for The Times had asked Baxter to remove himself from the case, citing his role as Deukmejian’s onetime appointments secretary, in which he was responsible for helping select judges and other appointees. Baxter declined, saying he had not been personally involved in the dispute with The Times and that the importance of the case extended beyond Deukmejian.

In his 40-page majority opinion, Arabian rejected Deukmejian’s contention that the calendars were “correspondence” and thus protected from disclosure. But the court agreed that the law enabled the governor to refuse to divulge the data in the public interest.

Forced disclosure could prevent the governor from meeting with politically unpopular groups, eliminating his access to a particular viewpoint, Arabian said.

Citing rulings elsewhere around the country, Arabian found that disclosing the identity of persons the governor met and consulted represented “the functional equivalent of revealing the substance or direction of the governor’s judgment and mental processes.”

Arabian noted that the newspaper was seeking material that undoubtedly covered thousands of meetings over the five-year period. No “identifiable public interest supports such a wholesale production of documents,” he wrote. Nonetheless, Arabian added, there might be instances where “certain specific information” in the calendars was being sought--and that the public interest in disclosure would outweigh that of nondisclosure.

The court also found that the governor raised justifiable security concerns over disclosing data that could reveal telltale patterns of meetings and travels. An individual intent on harming the governor might be able to use schedules to determine his likely plans in the future, Arabian said.