Let the sunshine in

In the 1950s, Los Angeles County's raging growth and increasing national importance made it an essential local news beat. The Hall of Administration's news corps included dozens of broadcast, print and wire reporters from as far away as Long Beach, the Antelope Valley and San Diego.

Today, because of cuts in newsroom budgets and staffs, only two wire services and two newspapers, including The Times, regularly cover a county government whose constituency totals 10.3 million people and whose domain is 5,000 square miles. With so few reporters and with bureaucratic information hard to come by for average citizens, the operations of the county's 39 departments remain largely out of view, apart from their own underserved clienteles -- such as indigent medical patients, inmates, public assistance recipients, foster children and so on.

Now, a key window into the workings of county government, one that has exposed some of its worst mistakes and malfeasance, has been slammed shut. In May, the county counsel's office decided, without announcement, to stop disclosing details of its legal settlements.

For decades, the settlement memorandums sent to the county claims board (which then passes them on to the supervisors for final approval) were available to the public. For beat reporters, they were leads to news stories. Without this source, such information would be available only if a matter had gone to court or if lawyers and their clients decided to disclose it. Increasingly, however, details of out-of-court settlements have been sealed.

In defending the decision to "classify" all settlement information, the counsel said these were as privileged as any other attorney-client communication. "There are no other public or private law offices that make these things public," said Donovan Main, chief deputy county counsel.

The settlement memorandums, usually drafted by the counsel's office, advised the Board of Supervisors that something so bad had happened in a department that the best the county could do was to bite its lip and pay. Main contends that outside law firms have only recently discovered these memos and are using the information against the county in other suits.

Steve Levin of the West L.A.-based Center for Governmental Studies wonders how this could be. "These settlements have been already agreed to. The whole purpose of making them open is letting the public know where its tax dollars are going."