Public trust in Oakland’s leadership hit a nadir last year.

Residents had seen crime rates shoot up, federal agents raid the mayor’s house, voters recall said mayor, and the city plunge into a financial crisis. It’s no wonder that a city budget survey found in 2024 that “satisfaction with local government is at a record low.”

At all levels of government, there are laws designed to build public trust by providing transparency into what powerful officials are doing and saying, so residents and taxpayers can hold them to account and weigh in. One such law is the California Public Records Act . This act was modeled on a federal law you may have heard of called the Freedom of Information Act.

Enacted in 1968, the state law established a “ fundamental and necessary right ” to access state

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