Petaluma Journalist Honored for Investigative Work

A Petaluma journalist whose work has appeared in the Bohemian, SF Weekly and Mother Jones and who has made a career of digging up ethics lapses and corporate malfeasance in reams of public documents, is being honored for his work.

Peter Byrne has received the Society of Professional Journalists’ James Madison Freedom of Information award for a series about the UC Regents entry into the private equity market, which substantially increased the university’s exposure to financial risk while enriching the regents, including former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The series was published last fall on Spot.us, and partially in the San Francisco Public Press, both community-funded news sites based in the Bay Area, and relied on a database of specific investments made by UC Regents. But getting access wasn’t easy.

Byrne filed a Freedom of Information request, but was told it would cost him thousands of dollars to receive the data he was seeking. Then when asked for the database on disk, but was informed that it would still cost $800.

“Their (Regents) public information office supposedly exists to help reporters, when, in fact, they consistently stonewall you,” Byrne, 58, said. Finally, an aide from Senator Leland Yee’s office made a call to university and the request was approved.

“That turned out to be key to entire story because it contained verification of investments that were being made into companies controlled by individual regents,” Byrne said.

What Byrne uncovered was that many regents, including Richard Blum, a financier and husband of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, made millions of dollars in their investments while the UC system laid off teachers and support staff and increased tuition by 30 percent.

Poring over SEC filings and the database of private equity investments, Byrne found that CalPERS, the largest public employee union in the country, had hired Blum’s firm to control half a billion in investments as well as paid $4 million a year to a company in which Schwarzenegger had an ownership stake.

“It’s kind of weird for the husband of a U.S. senator to be so involved in investments for CalPERS,” Byrne said. “It’s just stinky.”

Since the entire series was released, Byrne has been invited to speak by student groups at the University of California and his information about risky financial dealings seized on by unions. The project has also renewed Byrne’s belief in investigative reporting, which has been cut in many regional publications.

Byrne’s project, for example, cost $7,000, money that was almost entirely raised by the public, based on spot.us’s model of community-funded journalism.

“There is a huge demand for it from the public…and it gave me a lot of hope for the future of journalism,” he said.

Byrne will be honored Wednesday at an awards banquet in San Francisco.