100K Club is uncloaked

The California State Supreme Court issued two landmark rulings today. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The salaries and hiring and termination dates of government workers, including police officers, are public information and cannot be kept secret, a divided state Supreme Court ruled today in two related cases.
The California Public Records Act requires the state's Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training to disclose the names, departments, hiring and termination dates of California law-enforcement officers, the court ruled in one case that began in Sacramento County.
In the other case, involving the city of Oakland, the court said the public-records act also requires the disclosure of names and salaries of public employees making at least $100,000 a year.
Both cases involved news media requests for the disclosure of government personnel information.
"I'm very pleased," said Karl Olson, an attorney representing the Contra Costa Times in the Oakland case. "I think it's a major victory for the public's right to know. The court looked at whether the public interest in seeing how government's money is spent outweighs the assertions of privacy that have been made by the public employee unions, and they correctly concluded the public's interest is paramount."
In the Sacramento County case, a state appeals court had ruled that the information sought by the Los Angeles Times couldn't be disclosed because it was available only from personnel records. The appeals court ruled those records were not public documents.

Here are the rulings:Com. on Peace Officer etc. v. Super. Ct. and Internat. Prof. & Tech. Engineers v. Super. Ct.
California State Supreme Court website.