Are Gov. Newsom’s burner phones to tech execs a violation of transparency laws? | Opinion
News broke last week through Politico that an unnamed tech executive had received a burner phone from California Gov. Gavin Newsom with a note that read: “If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away.”
Since then, the Newsom administration has been particularly tight-lipped on who exactly received these phones, saying only that it was the governor’s own idea, and that roughly 100 of these phones went out to the state’s top tech-related business leaders.
We also know the California Protocol Foundation paid for the phones with money that didn’t come from taxpayers, but rather from the same pot of money that businesses and nonprofits fund for gubernatorial expenses like trips abroad.
I call foul on the whole play.
I don’t think this was Newsom’s idea, I think it was a publicity stunt from his PR team. (They probably think it makes him look real cool, just like his super popular and timely new podcast definitely does. Soooo cool.)
And if these phones really did go out to 100 business owners — I’m just spitballing here, but that list could include titans of industry like Apple, Google’s parent company Alphabet, Meta, Cisco, Adobe, etc. — then the public deserves to know exactly who has a direct line to the governor and what they’re talking about.
So far, everyone’s stayed mum.
All the way back in 2017, the California Supreme Court ruled that texts and emails sent by public employees on their personal devices or accounts are a matter of public record. Are these burner phones of Newsom’s an attempt to flout laws requiring public transparency?
Unless he’s solely using these phones to gossip with the girls on a Friday night, I think what these industry leaders and the governor are discussing should be a matter of public record — don’t you?
And if the governor is going to send out direct lines of contact to the people whose opinions clearly matter most to him, then why not send some of them to California-based organizations that are working to solve some of the state’s biggest issues? Like those that work to end homelessness or sex trafficking, those that seek to alleviate the state’s worsening affordable housing crisis, or protect reproductive rights?
Planned Parenthood of California should be on that list, as should the state’s American Civil Liberties Union chapters, leaders in the University of California and California State University systems, or how about the International Medical Corps, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, just to name a few of the people who deserve a direct line to the governor’s office.
If these cell phones are even real, then why did Newsom send them only to top business leaders?
Oh, that’s right, because the needs of California’s C-suite are, and always have been, safely ensconced in our governor’s back pocket.
The heart of good governance is transparency. John Adams once said that the wealthy “not only exert all their own subtlety . . . but they employ the commonality to knock to pieces every plan and model that the most honest architects in legislation can invest to keep them within bounds.”
I doubt the Founding Fathers ever imagined burner phones, with secret midnight texts from Zuck to Gavie.
