At the time, it made perfect sense.
In 1978, it was easy for anyone to use California Department of Motor Vehicles records to link a license plate number to the plate-holder's name and address. Police officers, judges and others who dealt with some of society's seamier denizens were unhappy about that, lest their work follow them home.
So state Sen. Lou Cusanovich, a Republican from the San Fernando Valley, carried a bill -- signed into law by then-Gov. Jerry Brown -- creating a confidential address program so state and local prosecutors and public defenders, state lawmakers, judges and peace officers, as well as their spouses and live-at-home children, could put their work addresses on DMV records instead of their home addresses.
Then the underlying law changed. Actress Rebecca Schaeffer was murdered in 1989 by a stalker who had gone through a private investigator to get her home address from DMV records. The Legislature reacted by passing a new law, written by Democratic Assemblyman Mike Roos of Los Angeles, to make most DMV records confidential, accessible only by police, courts, banks, insurers and some select others.
Asked recently whether his 1989 legislation made the 1978 confidential-address program obsolete, Roos -- now a public affairs consultant -- replied, "Probably so."
But the confidential address program established more than a decade earlier not only remained in place, it kept expanding.
For example, then-Assemblywoman Jackie Speier, now a Democratic U.S. representative from Hillsborough, got a law passed in 1994 to add stalking victims to the list; then-Assemblyman Don Perata, an Oakland Democrat, in 1998 said spouses and children of peace officers killed in the line of duty could stay in the programs for three years after the death; and then-Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, a Los Angeles Democrat, in 2001 added nonsworn court workers and psychiatric social workers.
Museum guards, certain DMV workers and certain nonsworn California Highway Patrol workers made the list in 2002 as part of their contract negotiations, ratified in a bill carried by then-state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, now the California Democratic Party's chairman.
Most recently, Assemblyman Sandre Swanson, D-Alameda, carried a bill that would've added Board of Equalization members, zoo veterinarians, workers at certain animal control shelters and code enforcement officers to the eligibility list; AB 923 was unanimously approved by the Assembly Transportation Committee but stalled out last year in the Assembly Appropriation Committee.
"I was approached by law enforcement" to carry the bill, Swanson said. Board of Equalization members could be threatened by people angry about their tax appeals, he said, while veterinarians and animal-control officers could be threatened by those they report for suspected animal-abuse or dogfighting activity.
Despite the confidentiality afforded all Californians, Swanson believes this program is still needed -- because of new technology, the drug trade, and national security issues, he said, we can't be too careful with security. He's considering whether to introduce a similar bill next year.
"But I make no apology for anyone that would use this security provision on a license plate to break the law and run toll plazas; those who are doing it are obviously jeopardizing the program for others," he said.
Motivated by news reports that confidential-address plate holders were racking up huge unpaid bills on Southern California toll roads, Assemblyman Jeff Miller, R-Corona, carried a bill that would have required all those on the confidential-address list to make sure the DMV always has their current, specific work address. AB 2097 passed the Assembly and the Senate Transportation & Housing Committee with unanimous support, but stalled out in Senate Appropriations.
Miller said the DMV and the state Department of Finance basically doomed the bill by saying it would cost too much to update the 1.5 million records they already have and to process new ones, as well.
"It wasn't surprising to me because they were stalling out all the bills that had costs associated with them," he said. "But they were not looking at the good sense of the policy and the potential revenue that could be derived from it, and so we're going to try it again next year."
Miller agreed the confidential-address program might well be obsolete in light of the more stringent security added for everyone in 1989, but "I don't think the Legislature -- in light of the fact that they have added so many different classifications over the years to the confidentiality program -- would have the wherewithal to shut it down," he said. "My goal in starting this whole process was to find a way to raise revenues without raising taxes."
But something needs to be done, he said.
"Clearly the occasional mishap, I understand, is not a huge concern," he said. "But there are elected officials and government employees who have found a way to exploit the system. The average person looks at that and says, 'That's not right, they're not above the law.' "
