California Legislature Votes to Keep Dam-Safety Plans Secret

Fresh off the Oroville Dam crisis, California lawmakers on Thursday voted to make dam-safety plans secret through language that was quietly inserted into a budget-related bill. The legislation, which requires Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature before becoming law, says emergency action plans at dams would be kept confidential to “protect public safety.” Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, said slipping the language into a budget-related bill, Senate Bill 92, without debate was “kind of insulting, really” to the 188,000 evacuees such as him who were forced to flee their homes for two days after the near-failure of Oroville’s emergency spillway.