L.A. County Supervisors, meeting transcripts

Los Angeles County res­id­ent Eric Pre­ven said he has found it dif­fi­cult to find timely Board of Su­per­visors tran­scripts pos­ted to the county’s web site. A curs­ory re­view by The Times found the tran­scripts avail­able here.

But Pre­ven’s re­quest high­lights the fact that there is no re­quire­ment to pro­duce meet­ing tran­scripts.

Pre­ven said the re­sponse let­ter from the D.A.’s pub­lic in­teg­rity di­vi­sion is “a good ex­ample of how the let­ter-of-the-law may not sup­port con­duct that is con­sist­ent with the spir­it of open gov­ern­ment. The nor­mal pro­ced­ure is to make the tran­scripts avail­able to the pub­lic, wheth­er there is a law re­quir­ing of­fi­cials to do it or not. Per­haps by pub­lish­ing some of the is­sues sur­round­ing pub­lic ac­cess the res­ult will shine light in the cracks between the let­ter of the law and the spir­it of the law.”