Transparency

California courts last year found that Los Angeles County prosecutors withheld evidence, intentionally misled jurors or committed other types of misconduct in 31 criminal cases, according to an Innocence Project report released last week. The decisions involved convictions dating back as far as 1984 and were among 102 California cases in which the group found that courts identified prosecutorial misconduct. In 26 of the cases — nine in Los Angeles County — the courts cited the misconduct in decisions to order a new trial, set aside a sentence or bar evidence, according to the Northern California Innocence Project, which is based at the Santa Clara University School of Law. Los Angeles County accounts for about a quarter of the state's felony criminal filings and one-third of felony trials.

Anyone who has ever fought with a lender over a lost or misapplied house payment should be heartened by the latest news from the new federal mortgage industry watchdog. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to propose a straightforward approach to loan administration that should benefit consumers and servicers, which are the firms that loan owners hire to collect payments, disburse taxes and insurance, and chase after delinquent borrowers. The fledgling bureau, which is not yet a year old, will propose the new rules this summer and expects to put them in place in January.

Susan Spano's article ["So You've Seen Paris," July 17] brought back wonderful memories. In 1995, we (my husband and another couple) rented a delightful apartment at 21 Rue du Cherche-Midi for a month. Big hotels were not yet part of that landscape. But tell me, is Poilâne still at No. 8 on Rue du Cherche-Midi? What a joy to buy a baguette or a lovely large boule at the best bakery in the world. Thanks for the memories. Shirley Porter Sunland Editor's note: There are several Poilâne bakeries in Paris, and the one on Rue du Cherche-Midi is still open.

Somewhere, Tony Soprano is having a good, long laugh. New Jersey is a state whose reputation for corruption has been immortalized in film, TV and in song by Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi alike. So there's just one question after learning that a new study puts New Jersey at the top of a State Integrity Investigation's ranking of the nation's states in terms of transparency and accountability to citizens. Who'd officials pay off? Actually, all bad jokes aside, New Jersey's long history of corruption has led to a litany of reforms in recent years.

Here's a not-so-tiny tidbit of data that's getting lost in the White House-driven public frenzy over healthcare legislation this month: The White House Democratic administration of Barack Obama, who denounced his presidential predecessor George W. Bush as the most secretive in history, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than the Republican did. Transparency and openness were so important to the new president that on...

California university foundations would have to disclose more information on fundraisers such as one headlined recently by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin under a measure that passed the Legislature on Thursday. The measure was one of dozens that state lawmakers sent to the governor. Others would bar the provision of electronic cigarettes to minors, ban elected officials from receiving unemployment benefits and require state pension-board candidates to provide more detail about their campaign funds in the wake of recent scandals.

The presiding judge of Los Angeles County's Juvenile Court is preparing to open child dependency proceedings to the public in an effort to improve accountability and transparency in child abuse, neglect and foster care placement cases. Currently, members of the media and the public are barred from entering dependency courtrooms without court permission. But Judge Michael Nash is proposing a blanket order that would make the hearings open unless someone objects and a judge decides to close the proceeding.

As the watchdog of the government's massive bailout of the financial sector, Neil M. Barofsky had a simple question: What had the nation's banks done with all their bailout money? Can't be answered, said the Treasury Department, because of the way banks move money internally. The department declined to put the question to the banks.

It's the moment nosy Norwegian neighbors have been waiting for -- the release of official records showing the annual income and overall wealth of nearly every taxpayer in the Scandinavian country. In a move that would be unthinkable elsewhere, tax authorities in Norway have issued the "skatteliste," or "tax list," for 2008 to the media under a law designed to uphold the country's tradition of transparency. It's Norwegians' way of keeping up with the Johansens -- from fishermen on the western fjords and Sami reindeer herders in the north to members of the committee that awarded President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize.

Re "Wrangling over psychiatry's bible," Opinion, Nov. 16 Christopher Lane's Op-Ed article alleges a lack of transparency in the development of the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM. The DSM is recognized worldwide as the source of definitive criteria for mental illnesses. The process for the development of the fifth edition of the DSM began in 1999 and will conclude with publication in 2012. Hundreds of international experts, vetted for conflicts of interest, are involved in researching the scientific literature, discussing all options, assuring that attention is paid to gender, ethnicity, age and other factors and, eventually, testing hypotheses in the field.

A strange thing has happened in the Los Angeles County jails in the six months since the FBI launched an investigation into allegations of abuse and misconduct by sheriff's deputies: The use of force has gone down by 16%. The number of times deputies relied on force to subdue inmates decreased from 296 during the previous six months to 248 from September through February, according to data Sheriff Lee Baca provided to the Board of Supervisors this...

A Los Angeles County supervisor called on the Sheriff's Department on Tuesday to be more transparent about how taxpayer dollars are being spent within its volunteer reserves program. Supervisor Gloria Molina's comments came after The Times reported this week that at least one reserve deputy — a fundraiser for Sheriff Lee Baca — had been assigned a county car, a perk most full-time deputies are denied. The department's acknowledgment came after several initial refusals to disclose that information.

"You're not going to believe what happened last night," Jeff Galfer said as he opened the door to his Atwater Village apartment. "I got another ticket. " Galfer and I had been talking for weeks about his Kafkaesque battles with the Los Angeles Parking Violations Bureau. Galfer would contest what he thought was an unfair parking citation, and the bureau would tell him his fine was on hold while the appeal was under review. The next thing he knew, a letter would arrive saying he owed not only the original fine, but late fees and penalties.

It's well known that the Supreme Court in its 2010 Citizens United decision lifted restrictions on political advertising by unions and corporations, contributing to the orgy of special-interest spending already on view in the 2012 presidential campaign. Less noted was the decision's reaffirmation of the constitutionality of laws requiring disclosure of the identities of political donors. Yet as the campaign already has demonstrated, Congress has not done nearly enough to shine the light of disclosure on who is bankrolling efforts on behalf of particular candidates, including those sponsored by supposedly independent "super PACs.

President Obama's first campaign ad of 2012 decried "secretive billionaires attacking" him through conservative nonprofit groups that do not reveal their contributors. But two Democratic nonprofit groups that do not disclose their donors made payments last year to their affiliated "super PACs," a tactic that can be used to undermine transparency. Priorities USA Action, a group started by two former Obama White House aides, accepted $215,000 from its tax-exempt arm, Priorities USA, for "operating expenses," according to campaign finance reports filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission came under fire from state officials Wednesday for a lack of transparency, then was forced to cancel its monthly meeting halfway into the session after officials acknowledged the venue had failed to publicly post the agenda as required by law. The cancellation came just hours after members of the California Science Center board, which owns the Coliseum land, chastised the stadium's top executive for...

Re "Court Blocks Church From Releasing Priest Abuse Files," April 13: Once again the victims/survivors of pedophile priests in the L.A. Archdiocese have been dealt a devastating blow. At the last minute, the California Supreme Court blocked the publication of summary information on pedophile priests that was prepared by the archdiocese and was to be released last December. Victims/survivors and their families, whose lives have been severely affected forever, have to face the fact that secrecy is apparently winning the battle over transparency and truth.

Re "Despite Market Woes It's No Blue Christmas in Manila," Dec. 17: Another good reason why the Philippines is emerging from the "Asian flu" in much better shape is that, unlike most of its ASEAN neighbors where government exercises control over the flow of information, there is a great deal of transparency in the Philippine media. I have just returned from a business assignment in Manila, and I still can't get over how easy it was to obtain information. Where else but in the Philippines are there gossip columns devoted to the goings-on in the business community?

The Federal Reserve's announcement that short-term interest rates are likely to stay low for two years or more drew the usual mix of catcalls and huzzahs, with critics saying the Fed was dooming the country to debilitating inflation and supporters saying it was sensibly encouraging economic growth. Some veteran Fed watchers, however, complained that Chairman Ben S. Bernanke was revealing too much about the board's thinking, which used to be cloaked in the kind of secrecy reserved for missile launch codes and CIA threat assessments.

There's a shocking disconnect at work these days in the relationship between the public and government workers: The public is demanding greater accountability, and public employees — social workers, police, teachers, even state legislators — are finding ways to avoid it. Legislators contend that they should be allowed to conduct budget deliberations in private. Police unions are fighting forcefully to protect the names of officers involved in shootings or other uses of force.