Joseph T. (Terry) Francke

Terry Francke, general counsel of the California First Amendment Coalition, has been with that organization since 1990. The Coalition is an alliance of those in the media, attorneys, and citizen activists who promote and defend the laws protecting freedom of information and expression. The Coalition spends much of its time helping people with problems arising under the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s local government open meeting law; and the California Public Records Act, which allows access to information held by most state and local agencies.

Francke came to the Coalition in 1990 after serving as legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association for ten years. A 1967 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, he attended McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific, from which he graduated in 1979. Prior to law school, his experience included radio news, public affairs positions in the Marine Corps and for a school district, and three years as editor of a weekly newspaper.

Francke’s work with the Coalition includes assisting those who call CFAC’s ActionLine with questions about open access to records and to meetings. That service is free to anyone and is used by journalists; public agency officials, employees and counsel; private attorneys, civic activists and students. He also writes FLASH, a weekly membership bulletin on current issues of interest, and coordinates CFAC’s legislative and litigation support.

Francke drafted the 1994 revisions to the Brown Act, California’s open meeting law for local agencies and is also the author of a model local government public information law, designed to provide more "sunshine" than state law’s minimum requirements. This model has been adopted in San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond and Contra Costa County. He is currently part of a working group to design an audit of state public information practices to be conducted by the State and Consumer Services Agency as directed by Governor Davis.

Francke is the author of CFAC’s guide, The California Journalist’s Legal Notebook, and is working with several co-authors on a litigation guide to the state’s sunshine laws, to be published later this year. He has also taught a class in media law in the graduate division of the Stanford University Department of Communication, is a contributor to the California Judges Association’s forthcoming update of its guide, Courts and the News Media, and serves as a member of the advisory committee to the National Center for Courts and the Media, a component of the National Judicial College in Reno, and as a director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.

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