{"id":132242,"date":"2025-09-04T12:47:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T12:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/132242\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T12:47:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T12:47:13","slug":"gavin-newsom-has-withheld-his-calendars-all-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/132242\/","title":{"rendered":"Gavin Newsom has withheld his calendars all year"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alexei Koseff<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\""A\"
\n\t\t\t\tGov. Gavin Newsom during a press conference before signing the Election Rigging Response Act at the Capitol Annex Swing Space in Sacramento on Aug. 21, 2025. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a common refrain for critics of Gov. Gavin Newsom: Focus on your job<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The jabs have grown louder this year as Newsom launched a new weekly political podcast<\/a> and traveled to other states that could be pivotal in a potential presidential campaign<\/a>. A poll in May found that twice as many California voters believe the governor is devoting more attention to boosting his national profile<\/a> than fixing the problems of the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he wants to prove to the United States that he would be a good president, why doesn\u2019t he start by leading and actually running the state of California?\u201d then-Republican Assemblymember Bill Essayli, who has since been appointed a U.S. attorney, said in a March appearance<\/a> on Fox News.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s difficult to evaluate what effect Newsom\u2019s extracurricular activities have had on his work, because the governor\u2019s office has not made his full schedule available all year.<\/p>\n

Each month, CalMatters requests Newsom\u2019s calendar under the California Public Records Act. While the governor\u2019s office routinely released those documents in the past, it has not provided anything new in five months and has yet to hand over any of his 2025 calendars.<\/p>\n

Multiple inquiries about a timeline for releasing the records, a requirement under the law, have been ignored during that period. Representatives for the governor\u2019s legal affairs unit, which handles records requests, wrote that the calendars \u201cwill be provided as soon as they are ready for release.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s spokesperson did not respond to questions about what is causing the delay, but said in an email Wednesday that the calendars would be provided when they are \u201cfinalized and ready for public disclosure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernor Newsom has been among the most transparent governors in California\u2019s history and we\u2019ll continue to share his calendar, as always, with the transparency, diligence, and accuracy it deserves,\u201d spokesperson Izzy Gardon wrote. He added, \u201cI look forward to reading your webpost about the hardships you\u2019ve encountered while waiting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not difficult \u2014 or should not be difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition<\/p>\n

David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, which advocates for government transparency, said it\u2019s \u201cdeeply problematic\u201d that the governor\u2019s office has not quickly fulfilled what amounts to a simple clerical task.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re not talking hundreds and hundreds of records that need to be rounded up and redacted. It’s a pretty straightforward request,\u201d Loy said. \u201cThis is not difficult \u2014 or should not be difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

A fight for public access<\/p>\n

California governors have shared their calendars for about two decades.<\/p>\n

Previously, Gov. George Deukmejian went to court to protect those records from disclosure, arguing that making his appointments public would discourage people from meeting with him and hinder his decision-making process. The California Supreme Court ruled in his favor in 1991<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then California voters expanded the Public Records Act in 2004, ultimately compelling then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to begin releasing his calendar<\/a>. During Gov. Jerry Brown\u2019s subsequent tenure, his office proactively provided his appointments log monthly to reporters who made standing public records requests.<\/p>\n

The schedules are of limited utility, because they include only official events, not personal or political activities, and even those are sometimes redacted to protect attorney-client privilege or the governor\u2019s security. Newsom\u2019s calendars from previous years include many days with just a few meetings or no official events listed at all, and the hours are often filled with \u201cwork time,\u201d providing no further details.<\/p>\n

But because most of the governor\u2019s other records, including emails, remain legally protected from disclosure, calendars offer the public the most comprehensive picture available of who Newsom is speaking to and how he is prioritizing his time. That means their release can still be politically fraught, and numerous administrations have resisted going beyond the minimum requirements.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be so much better for transparency if they just posted his calendar online,\u201d Loy said.<\/p>\n

Calendars not produced ‘promptly’<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s office last provided Newsom\u2019s calendars to CalMatters on April 1, for the months of September through December 2024.<\/p>\n

When a request is made under the California Public Records Act, government agencies are required to determine within 10 business days whether they have any disclosable documents and, if so, provide an estimated delivery date. The agencies are then supposed to produce the records \u201cpromptly,\u201d which is not a defined time frame.<\/p>\n

The law also obligates that records be produced as they existed at the time of the request.<\/p>\n

The calendars that Newsom\u2019s office has released in the past are PDF files that simply list his schedule in chronological order: date, time, a brief description of the appointment, location and staff lead.<\/p>\n

The entries appear to be copied over from a calendar program into a text file, which Loy said is concerning, because the law requires that electronic records are provided in their native format, for proper accountability.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole point of transparency law is \u2018trust but verify,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWe don’t have to take their word that they’re doing it right. We can see it for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s spokespeople did not respond to questions about how the governor\u2019s calendar is maintained and in what format.<\/p>\n

The delay echoes a similar issue involving Newsom\u2019s tax returns<\/a>. While they are not a public record, Newsom pledged to be the first California governor to release his filings every year while in office. But he has not done so in more than three years, last sharing a tax return in March 2022, as he was running for re-election.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Alexei Koseff, CalMatters Gov. Gavin Newsom during a press conference before signing the Election Rigging Response Act…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,37615,2013,3,2190,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-132242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-california-governor","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-news","tag-podcast","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}