Lawmaker Vows to Bar Closed Meetings of Lottery Commission

SACRAMENTO — Arguing that voters never intended the California Lottery Commission to play by different rules, a state lawmaker vowed Tuesday to remove a legal loophole that effectively allows the panel to meet in secret.

Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr. (D-Inglewood) said he learned of the loophole last week when the commission met to discuss the cancellation of a $150-million computer contract without notice to the public or the news media. Such an action would have been illegal for any other state or local government board.

“They can in fact do business in private. . . . We have a government commission that does not have to do business in the light of day and that certainly has to be corrected,” said Tucker, who heads the Assembly Government Organization Committee, which oversees the lottery.

Lottery General Counsel Roland Bowns said the lottery act approved by the voters in 1984 allows the commission to hold special meetings for any purpose and only requires that its own members be notified 48 hours in advance.

He said the commission’s regularly scheduled meetings, however, are governed by the same open-meetings law, known as the Bagley-Keene Act, that applies to other state boards and commissions.

The Bagley-Keene Act makes no provisions for special meetings.

Terry Francke, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, an alliance of journalists and citizens concerned about open government, said that as far he knows the lottery is the only state commission empowered to hold special meetings without notice to anyone but its members.