The unions’ worrisome financier
Is Ron Burkle really the kind of guy the newspaper unions seeking to buy some Knight Ridder newspapers want to be doing business with?
Burkle leads a financial company called Yucaipa which has offered to partner with The Guild-CWA to finance part of the union’s acquisition of some Knight Ridder newspapers.
He is a Democrat Party activist and a major contributor to the party. Bill Clinton and Jessie Jackson are members of his board.
According to the San Diego Union Tribune:
Burkle is worth an estimated $2.3 billion and is the owner of a fabled estate in Beverly Hills and a mansion in La Jolla. He recently teamed up with a labor union to make a bid for the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain – something of an irony given that he has tried to keep certain information about himself out of the news.
Last year, he had his employees buy stacks of copies of the Los Angeles Business Journal to keep people from reading an article about his divorce in the newspaper. His spokesman said he was trying to protect his child.
Now, he is trying to close some court records in California, apparently in an effort to keep details of his divorce secret, according to the story below from the San Diego Union Tribune.
The California Newspaper Publishers Association Legislative Bulletin (noted below) also has some details.
My politics probably are a close match with his. But a political activist with a major ownership position of some of the KRI papers is worrisome to me.
From the San Diego Union Tribune
Divorce info secrecy bill spurs dispute
By Bill Ainsworth
STAFF WRITERFebruary 24, 2006
SACRAMENTO – Billionaire Ron Burkle has tenaciously tried to keep records in his bitter divorce case secret, invoking a law that some claimed was designed specifically for his situation.
But two courts have declared that law unconstitutional.
Now a powerful lawmaker is quietly trying to rush a bill through the Legislature that would restore key parts of the law and could help Burkle win his fight to keep his records out of public view.
Related material from the CNPA Legislative Bulletin
Legislation introduced to overturn open court decision
Less than a month after the Second Appellate District Court of Appeal emphatically struck down a law that allowed parties in a divorce case to force judges to seal court records containing financial information and asset information, a state senator has introduced legislation in an attempt to save the law. The court’s decision in Burkle v. Burkle involves the divorce of billionaire Ron and Janet Burkle and tells the story of Ron Burkle’s relentless attempt to seal court records that describe his financial holdings and other assets.
The controversy arises out of Burkle’s use of a law, passed in 2004 over CNPA’s objections, that allows one party to a divorce to seal any record if it contains financial and asset records, even if the other party objects. The law requires an entire record to be sealed if it contains only a single reference to a bank account or asset. The Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and CNPA intervened in the Burkle’s divorce case to challenge the law and to support the presumptive First Amendment right of access to courts and court records.
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