Reasonable people may differ about the merits of an obscure bill filed last year in Sacramento to shore up the state Office of Homeland Security.
But one question about it legitimately interests all of us: How and why did it become transformed, as though by the touch of a magic wand, into a bill that helps out one of California's wealthiest citizens in his exceedingly ugly divorce?
The apparent beneficiary of this legislative legerdemain is Ronald W. Burkle, a prominent investor and former supermarket magnate who has been trying for more than year to keep the lid on scads of financial details piled up in his divorce case.
A member of the Forbes 400 (at No. 112, worth an estimated $2.3 billion), Burkle rose from bag boy at Stater Bros. to the owner of Ralphs, Food4Less and other chains. He later sold the supermarkets, but his regime is fondly remembered by union members as a period of sound and fair labor relations, unlike the thuggery practiced by his successors. He's also a leading donor to UCLA and major contributor to Democrats.
Whatever his laudable personal qualities, they aren't much in evidence in the divorce papers. I hesitate to go into the noisome particulars, but if he and his ex-wife, Janet, left any of the deadly sins out of their descriptions of each other in court, then I can't count to seven.
That brings us to Burkle's penchant for secrecy. In April 2004, he asked a state judge to strike from public court filings his home addresses, Social Security number and financial account numbers on the grounds that publication might expose his young son to the threat of kidnapping. The judge complied but refused to black out such details as the balances in the accounts or to seal the Burkles' revealing post-marital agreement.
Two months later, the Legislature enacted -- hastily, unanimously and without a single hearing -- a law requiring judges in divorce court to seal in their entirety (upon a party's motion) any documents that mention the party's assets or other financial details even in passing.
Burkle then applied to seal weeks of trial transcripts, 22 exhibits and 28 other documents. In January, responding to motions by his ex-wife and a group of newspapers including The Times, a state Court of Appeal made short work of the 2004 law. Because it deprived judges of any discretion to weigh a litigant's desire for privacy against the public's right of access to court records, the court ruled, the law was unconstitutional.
