Editorial: Open up secret Sheriff Corpus removal hearings now

As the proceedings to remove San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus from office enter the most critical stage, the secrecy must end.

The possible unseating of a high-ranking elected official from office should be conducted in public, with full transparency, not behind closed doors.

On Wednesday, the Bay Area-based First Amendment Coalition threatened litigation if the county does not open the removal hearings to public view.

The coalition demand letter is right: The county has established a quasi-judicial proceeding that requires sunshine. A public process is the morally, ethically and legally correct course.

Voters earlier this year gave the county Board of Supervisors the power to remove Corpus from office if she violated the law or neglected her duties. And they entrusted the supervisors to set up a fair process for evaluating the sheriff’s performance.

Fair to Corpus. And fair to the public. Voters didn’t grant the supervisors authority to conduct star chamber proceedings hidden from public view.

It’s time for the county to stop trying to blame Corpus for the secrecy. County supervisors set the rules. It’s up to them to ensure transparency.

As the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a landmark 1980 case on court access, “the appearance of justice can best be provided by allowing people to observe it.”

Thus far, however, that’s not what has happened. The Board of Supervisors cast a public vote to remove Corpus from office, but the basis for that vote — the investigations and a probation officer’s hearing that led up to it — have been kept secret by the county.

(Much of what we know so far about the county investigation and hearing has been from court documents in the parallel lawsuit Corpus filed trying to stop the county action.)

We now approach the most critical portion of the county removal process. Corpus has appealed the supervisors’ decision, triggering proceedings before a retired judge who will serve as a hearing officer and eventually issue a recommendation back to the Board of Supervisors.

During that appeal hearing, Corpus’ legal team can present whatever evidence she might have rebutting the accusations against her and, for the first time, question her accusers.

Corpus has demanded the hearing be held in secret. It’s troubling that an official would claim she deserves to keep her elected post but doesn’t want the public to hear the case against her or her defense. County officials have refused to provide a straight answer on whether they will accede to the sheriff’s demand.

As the First Amendment Coalition points out, Corpus’ legal justifications for sealing the proceedings are thin at best and overridden by the public interest in transparency.

“The Removal Hearing at issue here,” the coalition writes, “‘walks, talks and squawks’ very much like a judicial proceeding — a type of proceeding that has been presumptively open for centuries and is at the heart of the First Amendment right of access.”

As the Supreme Court said, “People in an open society do not demand infallibility from their institutions, but it is difficult for them to accept what they are prohibited from observing.”