Supervisor Wilson's Father to be Inducted into Press Hall of Fame
Former long-term Palm Springs resident, the late newspaper publisher Stanley T. Wilson, will be posthumously inducted into the California Newspaper Hall of Fame this weekend.
Stanley T. Wilson is the father of Fourth District Supervisor Roy Wilson.
The elder Wilson is best known for his work leading up to the state's open meeting laws, which require elected officials to conduct the public's business in public. Wilson, the former publisher of newspapers in both Mill Valley and Turlock, was also instrumental in getting a proposed California State College campus located in Turlock.
An early crusader for the public's right to know what their elected officials and other public servants are doing, the former California Newspapers Association President convinced his local Assemblyman Ralph Brown to carry legislation which is now well known to journalists as the Ralph M. Brown Act.
The stated intention of the Brown Act is to ensure "that actions and deliberations of public bodies created to conduct the public's business are taken openly"; and "that the people remain fully informed about the conduct of its business so that they may retain control over the governmental agencies they have created to serve them."
Problem: the Brown Act applied only to city and county government. Solution: Wilson campaigned again, this time with Assemblyman William T. Bagley to advance legislation that would compel state agencies to comply with open meeting law. The result was the Bagley-Keane Act, still guiding the conduct of state agencies today.
The Cal Press, official publication of the California Press Association, reported in its fall 2007 edition that Bagley credited the newspaper publisher with the Assemblyman's own initial interest in public meeting law.
The Press quotes Bagley as saying that Wilson "was my inspiration. It was this issue, new to me at the young age of 30 when first elected, that was the very genesis for my interest and action on behalf of FOI (Freedom of Information)."
As far as his efforts to locate the new California State College campus (now California State University, Stanislaus) at Turlock, The Press reports that "At a Chamber of Commerce dinner... Wilson received a standing ovation and was credited with being 'the man most responsible for bringing the state college to Turlock." The City of Turlock had been in a fierce competition with the much larger City of Modesto as the home of the County's only state college campus.
The purpose of the California Newspaper Hall of Fame is to honor "deceased newspaper men and women whose outstanding devotion to their responsibilities resulted in substantial contributions to their regions and to the development of California."