Charles Halpern Letter to the Attorney General
By Charles Halpern
| 12. 14. 2004
Dear Mr. Attorney General:
I am writing to request you to take action pursuant to your duties under the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act, Sec. 11130(a). I request you to take such steps as are necessary to prevent a meeting in violation of the Act-- the meeting of the Citizen's Independent Oversight Committee scheduled for December 17. In addition, I request you to determine if an attempt was made to build a consensus in advance of the meeting on issues that were properly the public's business and therefore should have been deliberated at the meeting, with full public participation.
As you know the voters of California passed a historic amendment to the California Constitution less than six weeks ago. Proposition 59, now enshrined in the Constitution, reaffirms the right of the people to participate actively about the conduct of the people's business; in particular, it states that the "meetings of public bodies… shall be open to public scrutiny" and that a statute implementing that policy "shall be broadly construed if it furthers the people's right of access, and narrowly construed if...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 09.25.2025
In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...
By Jacob Bogage, The Washington Post | 09.03.2025
The conservative group behind the Project 2025 governing playbook for President Donald Trump’s second term is set to propose sweeping revisions to U.S. economic policy meant to encourage married heterosexual couples to have more children.
The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing...
By Caroline Kitchener, The New York Times | 08.21.2025
Less than two weeks after an Alabama Supreme Court decision upended in vitro fertilization in the state and prompted a national backlash, over 100 conservative congressional staff members and I.V.F. skeptics crammed into a meeting room a few blocks from...
By Carter Sherman, The Guardian | 08.23.2025
For Erica L and her husband, in-vitro fertilization was the “nuclear option”.
After two years of trying to conceive, Erica and her husband had no idea why they could not have a baby. Doctors said only that they had “unexplained...