Message from the Chair

• Publication year: 2016
• Author: By Robert S. Horwitz

Message from the Chair

By Robert S. Horwitz

If you look at the Taxation Section webpage and scroll down to the list of standing committees and their officers, you will notice something strange. Whereas in the past, the standing committees had four or five officers, all standing committees now have two officers, a chair and a vice chair. As of April 1, 2016, a number of other sections of The State Bar of California no longer have standing committees. These changes are a reaction to a provision of the 2015 State Bar dues bill.

Each year the State Legislature enacts legislation setting the coming year's State Bar dues. The dues bill enacted in 2015 contained a provision that made the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act applicable to The State Bar of California, including the sections, their subcommittees and standing committees.

The Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act imposes a number of new requirements on meetings of a quorum of a body with three or more members. To except the standing committees from these requirements, as Chair, I made the decision to have only two officers for each standing committee. With the new structure, the standing committees will be able to continue to offer quality educational programs for their members while being fully compliant with Bagley-Keene.

My immediate reaction on learning about the Legislature making Bagley-Keene applicable to the State Bar, the sections and their subcommittees, was that someone wanted to force the sections out of the State Bar. This appears to be afoot.

California has a "unified bar": a regulatory agency that attorneys are required to join in order to practice law in California. Most states have a unified bar. The primary mission of The State Bar of California is public protection as the state agency that licenses and disciplines attorneys. At the same time, it represents the State's lawyers and has a supermajority of lawyers on its governing body, the Board of Trustees. This raises serious antitrust issues in light of the Supreme Court's decision in North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. Federal Trade Commission, 547 US ___ (2015), which held that a state regulatory agency is subject to federal antitrust law if the majority of its decision makers are "active market participants" in the occupation that it regulates.

In addition, in June 2015, the State Auditor issued a report on the California State Bar...