Senate OKs opening police files

The California Senate voted Monday to relax confidentiality rules surrounding police disciplinary records, a topic so incendiary among Los Angeles law enforcement officials that one union leader has threatened political reprisals.

Professional Peace Officers Assn. President John R. Stites told his lobbyist in a widely circulated e-mail that if the bill passed, his union would publicly oppose efforts to change California’s term limits law.

The effort to alter term limits is a priority for many sitting legislators, who are trying to place an initiative on next February’s ballot. Some state lawmakers would be allowed to extend their current terms under the initiative.

“Ensure that it be understood that this will only be the beginning,” Stites, who is also president of the Southern California Assn. of Law Enforcement, wrote in the e-mail, which his lobbyist circulated to law enforcement advocates and a few Capitol staffers.

The measure was prompted by a California Supreme Court ruling last year that restricted access to law enforcement personnel records. After the ruling on the case, which originated in San Diego, the Los Angeles Police Department changed its rules to prohibit access to information from disciplinary board meetings and records.

Passions about the issue have been further heightened by disclosures that an LAPD board cleared the officer who in 2005 fatally shot 13-year-old Devin Brown as Brown backed a stolen car in the officer’s direction.

The bill would allow municipalities to open disciplinary hearing records, such as those of LAPD boards of rights, and other documents that the court ruling in Copley Press vs. Superior Court of San Diego had allowed to be closed. Police unions around the state have fought the bill, saying that hostile bloggers and trial lawyers would mine the records to try to undercut the credibility of officers in cases unrelated to the ones that prompted investigations.

The Senate passed the measure 21-10 and sent it to the Assembly. The measure’s sponsor, Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), released Stites’ e-mail, which she decried as an inappropriate “bully tactic.”

“This is essentially a quid pro quo, blatantly blending legislative votes on public policy matters to a vote at the ballot box that directly affects their careers,” she said.

Stites and his lobbyist, Timothy Yaryan, said Romero was intentionally misconstruing the aim of the e-mail, which they said was never intended for any legislator to read. Yaryan said he sent it using a distribution list that law enforcement advocates use to keep abreast of issues and lobbying positions. A few Capitol staffers who focus on law enforcement issues are also on the list.

Romero “put it out there as if this was directed at legislators, and nothing could be further from the truth,” Yaryan said. He said he regretted forwarding Stites’ e-mail and would take legislative staffers off his distribution list.

Stites was unrepentant about his e-mail, in which he wrote that his two groups “adamantly oppose this legislation to the point that if it is passed we will move quickly to oppose any term limit reform legislation publicly. There is no compromise on this.”

Stites said in a telephone interview that he and his groups have long opposed easing of term limits, but anger over the confidentiality issue is prompting them to take an overt role against it.

The police records measure, SB 1019, passed with the minimum number of votes but with unusual bipartisan support. Four Senate Republicans -- Sam Aanestad of Grass Valley, Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield, Bob Margett of Arcadia and Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks -- joined 17 Democrats in favor.

One Democrat, Lou Correa of Santa Ana, sided with nine Republicans in opposition. Eight senators who were present in the Senate on Monday did not vote, including three from the Greater Los Angeles area: Dick Ackerman (R-Irvine), Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) and Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach). Abstentions count as “no” votes.

The Legislature is racing toward its mid-session deadline. After Friday, any bill that has not passed one chamber is declared dead for the year, although sponsors can revive them in 2008. Other bills that passed Monday and are headed to the other house included these:

* Police would be required to record interrogations of violent felony suspects in custody under SB 511 by Sen. Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara), which aims to reduce false confessions and wrongful convictions. The bill passed the Senate 22-13.

* State public health officials would create a public bank of umbilical-cord blood to collect and store the stem cell-rich byproduct of birth, which has the potential to treat diseases including leukemia and lymphoma, under a bill by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino (D-La Canada Flintridge). AB 34 passed the Assembly unanimously.

* A new state Office of Immigrant Affairs would be created to ensure the integration and civic participation of new citizens through a Senate bill. SB 1 by Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) passed the Senate 23-13.

* Illegal immigrants would be able to obtain a California driver’s license through another Cedillo bill. The bill, SB 60, is Cedillo’s seventh legislative attempt to require the state to license people who cannot prove they are in California legally. It passed 23-13, but faces another all-but-assured veto by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger if it passes the Assembly, as it has in the past.

* Legislation to revamp the definition of domestic partners in California also cleared the Senate. SB 11 by Sen. Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) would remove the current restriction that at least one partner of an opposite-sex couple be older than 62 in order for the two to qualify as domestic partners. Social conservatives, including the California Catholic Conference, opposed the measure because they said it would devalue marriage by making its state-sanctioned privileges no longer exclusive.

* Meat from cloned animals would have to be labeled as such under another Migden bill, SB 63, which cleared the Senate 21-14.

* Alternative fuels would be encouraged under two measures passed by Sen. Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego). SB 210, which passed 21-13, would require the California Air Resources Board to find ways to reduce the carbon in gasoline and diesel fuel sold in California by 10%. SB 494 would require the air board to adopt regulations to require that half the new cars and trucks sold in the state by 2020 run on alternative fuels. That bill passed 22-14.

* Plans for a dairy operation near an upstate park that one legislator described as “sacred to the state’s black population” would be banned under an Assembly measure.

Tulare County supervisors in March approved the operation of two large dairies next to the Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park. The bill would prevent the dairies from being built within 2.5 miles of the park site.

The park honors Allen Allensworth, an escaped slave, Civil War veteran and proponent of African American self-determination who founded a farming town in 1908.

AB 576 by Assemblywoman Wilmer Amina Carter (D-Rialto) passed 41-23, with Republicans objecting that state legislators were wrongly inserting themselves into a local matter.

jordan.rau@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Nancy Vogel contributed to this report.

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To read the text of bills, legislative analyses or how lawmakers voted, go online to leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html.