Sacramento -- Three of the state's most prominent labor unions filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to stop the Schwarzenegger administration from distributing news-like video segments it has produced to promote its agenda.
The California Labor Federation, the California Nurses Association and a division of the Service Employees International Union claim the segments produced by the state labor and health agencies violate the state's law against using government resources to produce propaganda promoting its policy positions.
The lawsuit also asserts that the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency secretly shared two versions of its proposed regulations with representatives for California businesses, and that it suspended judgments on meal break disputes while trying to get a new regulation in place.
The lawsuit is the latest challenge to the use of the segments publicizing the governor's regulatory agenda. The segments, which were produced for broadcast news outlets, were styled as television news reports trumpeting the administration's agenda, providing interviews with officials and supporters, voice-overs by a state employee acting as a reporter, and suggested script for anchors to read -- but little reporting of critical viewpoints or suggestions that the proposals were controversial.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/22/BAGIIBSQL21.DTL