Tick-tock, tick-tock... 2009 is slowly coming to an end.

And with New Year's approaching, so too come the requisite New Year's resolutions.

Here are a few I suggest for City Hall:

• I will seek help after my budget runs the first million dollars into the red.
• I will not allow wetlands to be destroyed.
• I will not trade public land to developers.
• I will not appoint any friends to city jobs.
• I will not punish people with a slap on the wrist and a $140,000 a year 'demotion.'
• I will not take any gifts from lobbyists.
• I will be more transparent in everything I do.

Oh, if only we could have a charter vote on these items. Especially the last one.

You see, your City Hall doesn't really want you to know what goes on the floors above the lobby of 333 Ocean Blvd.

In fact, your elected officials do the bare minimum to inform the public. In many cases they even stretch this.

Here is an example. There is a technique used by your city government that I call "The Shuffle." I don't know if it has other names, but this is what I call it. It has been part of the City Hall political playbook for years and I have seen it being used first hand in various departments.

It usually starts with some kind of report, study, or analysis that one of your city officials deigns should not be released when it is completed by staff. It could be embarrassing, or threaten an upcoming vote, or simply doesn't match the official City Hall message on the topic.

Now for a report or study or analysis to become a public document, it has to be 'completed' according to state law. Unfortunately, this definition is vague. "The Shuffle" takes advantage of this loophole.

Once completed by staff, the "Shuffled" document is given a cover sheet with the names of, oh, say a dozen officials that must read it and sign off before passing it along. During this 'approval' process, the city maintains that it is not a completed document, and thus, not available to anyone even under a public records request. So the document lingers in various inboxes because no one is calling around saying, "hurry up and get this approved."

Slowly it makes its way to the final desk, where it sits awaiting that final sign-off until, at some point, it is decided that the time is right to release the document -- typically very late on a Friday evening (sometimes before a three-day weekend) to minimize press reaction.

The danger here is that in almost all cases, documents that receive "The Shuffle" treatment are those that run counter to the propaganda that is coming out of City Hall. These documents typically point out flaws in the thinking of your local officials. These documents are exactly the kind of information that the citizenry needs to ascertain if they are being fairly and properly represented.

And this is just one small technique that is used to keep information from the public, or at least to discourage the public from having access to it.

The irony here is that by being less transparent, City Hall has actually become more invisible.

Invisible to the public, invisible to accountability, and invisible to the watchful eyes of those, like your intrepid writer, that report on such things.

And, in case you didn't know, invisible is not a good thing.

It's like what the mysterious title character played by Claude Rains in the 1933 classic 'The Invisible Man' said about invisibility: "Don't you see what it means? Power. Power to rule... to make the world grovel at my feet. Power, I said."

Such is also the case with an invisible City Hall.

And even when confronted with an opportunity to be less invisible, to be more open, City Hall does nothing.

Take for example the recent situation with now-demoted and slapped-on-the-wrist Craig Beck.

Mr. Beck's "vacation-with-a-lobbyist," where he accepted a free hotel room from a lobbyist friend who does business with the city, provided several great opportunities for City Hall officials to finally break the invisibility shield that has surrounded their activities for so long.

City Hall officials, including Mayor Bob Foster, City Manager Pat West and the entire City Council could have taken the opportunity to increase City Hall transparency -- but in typical City Hall fashion, they did not.

Mr. West could have published the client list of Mr. Beck's lobbyist friend Mike Murchison.

Mr. West could have cross-checked and published a list of RDA contracts that involved Mr. Beck and clients of Mr. Murchison.

Mayor Foster could have demanded that all City managers and council members publish their daily calendars, to let the public know when they meet with people like Mr. Murchison.

However, none of these things have resulted from the Mr. Beck affair.

Last week, this column detailed a few of the contractual items that Mr. Beck had brought before the RDA board during his tenure that involved clients of his lobbyist friend Mr. Murchison. Since then, Mr. Murchison has essentially blanked out his website where his client list was printed. The site now says simply "Our website is currently being updated. Please check back later. Thank you."

So, if Mr. West is not going to do it and in the sake of the public interest, you can click here to see the list as it appeared on Mr. Murchison's public site last week.

In addition, why should any citizen of Long Beach have to file a public records request to get the daily calendar of a public official? City Hall has no problem publishing a calendar of community events and public meetings (as required by law), but it can not publish a set of calendars letting the public know what its officials are doing on a daily basis? I could understand if the majority of these officials were Luddites, but they know enough about the internet to be surfing it while the public is talking during City Council meetings, as the Press-Telegram discovered through public records requests earlier this year. Besides, city officials have a whole department of tech staff to solve such problems.

The funny thing is, you have a legal right to view these daily calendars. Show up at City Hall and ask for the documents and they must either be produced or give you a date when they will be produced within a certain time frame. The same can be done through a written public records request.

As far as I have been able to determine, only the freshman council member from the First District, Robert Garcia, currently publishes his current daily calendars online. Also, Fifth District Council member Gerrie Schipske posts her daily schedule online, however it is created after the fact and usually lags behind nearly a month. Eighth District Council member Rae Gabelich also publishes a calendar, but it lacks any specific dates other than the month and contains little more than regularly scheduled hearings and meetings with staff.

Look at it this way: let's say you were the head of a company that had 20 or so employees. What would you do if the vast majority of these employees did not let you know what they were doing on a daily basis? I'm thinking that some new policies about reporting time or mass layoffs would be in order.

And in essence, as a citizen of Long Beach, you are the CEO. City Hall officials serve at your behest.

Here is another irony of transparent government... it saves money. You see, every time someone files a public records request to obtain documents that could easily be published, an attorney in the City Attorney's office has to take the time to read the request and determine whether it will be honored or not. If they do decide to honor it, the City Attorney's office then has to go and gather the requested material. Usually this is accomplished by contacting the involved city official or staffer and having them search for the material, make copies, and forward it back to the City Attorney's office for transmittal to the records requester. This all takes staff time and costs general fund dollars. Reduce the need for such requests, say by publishing calenders, and you cut down on the number of records request and in turn save taxpayer dollars without reducing the public's access to public documents.

Serving as a public official carries some heavy responsibility. One of the most serious is making sure that all city business is done in the scorching light of the public eye. For better or worse. After all, you only need fear the public spotlight if you have done something wrong.

And with that, I think we are done with the soapbox for this year.


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