CalAware Today

Name the Best/Worst Public Meeting E-Agendas

OPEN MEETINGS -- The folks at the Modesto Bee plan to spark a little public interest in what's otherwise a pretty dreary subject: the language and other online approaches bureaucrats use to alert the community of the business to be discussed at impending public meetings.  Let them know your favorite worst agendaspeak—or best use of the Internet to highlight coming meetings—by tomorrow.

Council's Special Meeting Ploy Violated Brown Act

OPEN MEETINGS -- "A Superior Court judge tentatively ruled Monday that the Los Angeles City Council violated the state's open meeting law by approving a 76,000-square-foot shopping center in South Los Angeles without giving the public sufficient advance notice," reports David Zahnhizer in the Los Angeles Times.

Governor, Legislators in Denial on Closed Lunch

OPEN MEETINGS -- Even as spokesmen for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders deny that the Governor's closed-door luncheon for the lawmakers at a private club after his State of the State address violated laws requiring open meetings of the legislature, the admitted facts make these protestations incredible.

Governor Hosts Closed Luncheon with Lawmakers

OPEN MEETINGS -- Two days after refusing to let a majority of a city council meet in closed session with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger because of concerns for violation of the Brown Act, his staff defended his closed-door luncheon meeting to which all legislators were invited as simply a social occasion not governed by the lawmakers' own open meeting mandates.

Trustee Exits after Vote Deal That Passed Her over

OPEN MEETINGS -- "In a dramatic move supporting government transparency and accountability, Dr. KimOanh Nguyen Lam, trustee for the Garden Grove Unified School District, walked out of Tuesday evening’s board meeting over an alleged blatant violation of the Brown Act by her fellow board members" that denied her a nomination to a board officer's position, reports Chris Prevatt for TheLiberalOC.com.

CalAware's McKee Gets Inyo Board to Drop Panel

OPEN MEETINGS -- A Brown Act demand for correction from Richard McKee, president emeritus of Californians Aware, prompted the Inyo County Board of Supervisors to fold a controversial committee dealing with access to Klondike Lake rather than open it up to public attendance, reports Benett Kessler for Sierra Wave.

Public Services Downsizing Talks in a Fishbowl

OPEN MEETINGS -- When a hand-picked advisory committee is assigned by a local agency's governing body to look at the depressing options for cutting the agency's programs or facilities to fit a shrunken budget, its meetings are open under the Brown Act.  But should everything said be reported in the press, no matter how tentative?  Many reporters' reflexes may find the answer obvious, but the Modesto Bee's Michelle Hatfield has given the question some careful thought.

Brown Act Challenge to Council Ends Amicably

OPEN MEETINGS -- CalAware President Emeritus's Richard McKee's intervention led to the Patterson City Council's acknowledgment this week that it had overstepped the limits of California’s open-meeting rules, and a pledge to comply more fully with the law in the future, reports James Leonard in the Patterson Irrigator. McGee expressed admiration for the city attorney's grace under fire.

Recall Fizzles: Student Leader Wouldn't Censor

FREE SPEECH/OPEN MEETINGS -- The student body president at Sacramento City College, summarily removed and suspended for permitting a graphic anti-abortion display at a student forum, has been reinstated—because his recall election was taken at an unlawful meeting, reports Stephanie Rodriguez for SacCityExpress.com, the college's "student-run news portal."

CalAware's McKee Faults School Board Meetings

OPEN MEETINGS -- Richard McKee, president emeritus of Californians Aware, says the West Covina School District has violated state open-government laws several times, and in a letter addressed to Superintendent Liliam Leis-Castillo and the district's school board members, has accused the district of failing to provide accurate, specific information on agendas, reports Maritza Velazquez in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

L.A.'s D.A: We Work to Get Brown Act Compliance

OPEN MEETINGS – Kenneth Ofgang reports in the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, Los Angeles that District Attorney Steve Cooley and two top deputies said last week that their office aggressively enforces the state’s open meetings law for local public agencies with an aim of gaining compliance, not to punish anyone or entangle itself in local politics.

Editor: 'Mad As Hell' Ethos Fits Los Angeles Too

OPEN MEETINGS -- "Facing the public is becoming more precarious by the day for our electeds . . . and, if pollster and advisor Frank Luntz is right there is no let-up in sight," says CityWatch LA editor Ken Draper.

L.A. Brown Act Prosecutors to Hold Open Forum

OPEN MEETINGS -- Public prosecutors in Los Angeles County will present a free panel presentation on Thursday, October 1, explaining how the district attorney and city attorneys enforce the Brown Act.  The program is open to the public and will include Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware.

SF Supervisor: Expanded Speech No Chaos Threat

OPEN MEETINGS -- A member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors says her proposal to open meetings of committees of the Board to public comments on matters not on the committee agenda needn't lead to chaos, reports Joe Eskenazy in SF Weekly.

Brief Attacks Ruling Undermining Sunshine Law

OPEN MEETINGS -- The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reports it yesterday filed an amicus curiae brief urging the entire 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the constitutionality of the Texas Open Meetings Act which, In an unprecedented decision earlier this year, a three-judge panel of that court found to violate the First Amendment rights of certain elected officials to discuss public business in secret.

Bill Tightens Serial Meetings Ban for State Bodies

OPEN MEETINGS -- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday signed legislation to update the open meeting law for state boards and commissions to tighten its prohibition against the use of serial meetings, reports the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA) in its Legislative Bulletin.

Brown Act Stretchmarks from around the State

OPEN MEETINGS -- Brown Act controversy roundup: Planning commission e-mail and Wal-Mart expansion in Chico; health care district board's closed "trade secrets" session on zoning restrictions in Patterson; library commission chair's silencing of public comment in San Francisco; wrongful police impounding of vehicles discussed in "personnel evaluation" closed session in Farmersville.

CalAware Warning Stops Session Closed to Most

OPEN MEETINGS -- A warning from Californians Aware led to the cancellation of a meeting by a rural fire board Tuesday night that would have invited firefighters and volunteers into closed session to state their ideas for a new chief and for the future direction of the district.

Judge Orders Temporary Halt to Market Approval

OPEN MEETINGS -- A San Mateo County Superior Court judge has blocked the city of East Palo Alto from discussing or taking any action on the dispute over a proposed Mi Pueblo Food Center, issuing a temporary injunction in response to a Brown Act complaint, reports Diana Samuels for the Palo Alto Daily News.

Funding Shift Noted in Staff Report, Not Agenda

OPEN MEETINGS -- The Santa Barbara County Association of Governments is being accused of violating the Brown Act when it approved channeling money from a Highway 101 widening project toward construction of a suicide barrier on Cold Springs Bridge, reports the Santa Ynez Valley Journal.

Marc McGinnes, a former lawyer and a representative for Friends of the Bridge, a local group opposed to the barrier, sent a letter to the county’s District Attorney’s office calling for an investigation and then to take “appropriate civil and criminal actions to address the violation.”

On June 18, SBCAG approved as a consent item — meaning there was a consensus to approve without open discussion — a fund transfer between three construction projects to close a shortfall for the $12.5 million Highway 101 Ellwood/Cathedral Oaks interchange project in Goleta.

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“The proposed funding trade would help ensure timely delivery of two projects supported by SBCAG — the Elwood/Cathedral Oaks interchange and the Cold Spring Bridge,” reads the staff report.

Though SBCAG provided a staff report on the proposal, it did not name or refer to these two projects in its consent calendar.

“Thus, stakeholders and other members of the public interested in participating in SBCAG decision-making concerning either or both the Cold Spring Bridge barriers and/or the Hwy 101 Milpas to Hot Springs Road widening project were deprived of notice of the proposed action(s) and the opportunity to be heard,” wrote McGinnes in a letter to the association.

As of press time, SBCAG Chairwoman Lupe Alvarez did not respond to several attempts to contact her for comment.

Kevin Redding, legal counsel for SBCAG, dismissed the accusation. He said because the item was primarily about funding the Ellwood/Hollister project, naming the other projects in the consent calendar was unnecessary. “This was not about the bridge,” he said, adding that the staff report, which details the proposal’s impact on the other projects, was posted on SBCAG’s bulletin board and on its Web site.

“That is laughable,” McGinnes responded, during an interview with the Journal. “And it’s not just laughable. What they did is illegal.”

“If you’re reading an agenda that doesn’t appear to pertain to anything you’re concerned about, why would you go online?” McGinnes said. “Carrying that argument to a logical conclusion, you’d have to say there’s a duty on the part of any citizen who’s interested in any topic to not only read the agenda item description but all the staff reports. No court would agree with that. They’re hoping that the court will agree with his characterization.”

Local Officials As Brown Act Whistleblowers

OPEN MEETINGS -- Is it just a temporary blip or an illusion of wishful thinking, or is the Brown Act beginning to be enforced more assertively by the very local officials whose collective action it is designed to keep in the open?

Or is this phenomenon limited to local body alumni or short-timers with little to lose for rocking the boat? Consider two recent examples of those willing to blow the whistle on their current or former peers, complaining of perceived violations of the open meeting law.  One is from yesterday's Lompoc Record:

During a closed meeting of the Lompoc Unified School District Board of Education in June 2008, two of the members expected only to discuss the possible hiring of an interim personnel director.

Instead, former board members Bob Campbell and Ken Ostini said, they were surprised by the suddenness of a motion to hire Marilyn Corey, who had been interim personnel director in 2002, and the existence of a proposed contract to pay Corey $500 per day.

The actions of the board majority — Sue Schuyler, Anne Bossert and Kris Andrews — were highly inappropriate and perhaps violated California’s open meetings law, according to Campbell and Ostini, both of whom declined to seek re-election in November.

Andrews, Schuyler and Bossert deny that they violated the Brown Act and are reacting strongly to the accusation.

Although Corey wasn’t hired for that position, the discussion at the meeting a year ago threw the board into a tailspin, symptomatic perhaps of the turmoil it has been engulfed in for the past couple of years as it has made deep, painful budget cuts and controversial personnel moves.

It quickly became apparent, Campbell said, that the board majority had been discussing personnel moves privately and reaching a majority consensus outside of a board meeting — a clear violation of the Brown Act.

Another is from yesterday's San Jose Mercury News:

San Jose's planning commissioners Wednesday will formally rescind and retake last month's vote naming Thang Do as the panel's new chairman, following a complaint that the votes for his selection were illegally lined up ahead of time.

The outgoing chairman, Jim Zito, said Tuesday that he had asked the city attorney's office to investigate the matter, first reported in the Mercury News. The attorney's office recommended the vote be retaken.

Four of the seven commissioners — Xavier Campos, Christopher Platten, Hope Cahan and Do — reportedly discussed the matter before the panel's May 13 meeting, in violation of the state's open-meeting laws. They made up the four votes backing Do over outgoing Vice Chairman Matt Kamkar.

"I, as chair, specifically requested an investigation into this Brown Act violation," Zito said. "It's my responsibility."

The Brown Act is meant to prevent a majority of any government panel from privately discussing votes and other issues. Campos and Platten have said no such discussions occurred.

The recommendation by City Attorney Rick Doyle's office doesn't require commissioners to say whether Brown Act rules were broken. But commissioners apparently received a notice from Doyle's office spelling out the nuances of the law; Doyle could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

A third item from yesterday's Atherton Almanac deals not with a Brown Act violation but still a restriction of speech and participation rights by majority jealous of its control.

Two members of the Atherton City Council are accusing their colleagues of censorship for making it harder to place issues on meeting agendas.

Until recently, Atherton had no formal process for a member of the council to add an item to a meeting agenda, leaving it up to the city manager to set the agenda. In March, a new policy was adopted requiring the approval of two council members before an issue could be placed before the entire council.

But now that's going to change. At the June 17 meeting, a divided City Council passed new rules requiring an additional step -- not only does a pair of council members have to agree in order to propose an agenda item, but it will require a majority vote of the council to authorize the item's placement on a future meeting agenda.

So, if three or more members of the council vote against a proposed item, that item won't get on a meeting agenda and won't be discussed by the City Council.

The vote was 3-2, with Elizabeth Lewis and Charles Marsala opposed.

"Agenda items can be very dangerous if they're not approved by the council," said Councilman Jim Dobbie.

Getting something on a council meeting agenda is important because, under the state's open meeting law known as the Brown Act, an elected body can't take action on anything that hasn't been placed on an official agenda and published at least 72 hours in advance. The rules can be cumbersome, but they serve a purpose -- to prevent the public from being blindsided by government decisions.

Mr. Marsala said that a lot of controversial issues faced by the town in the past few years would have benefited from a public airing, if only he had been allowed to get them on the council's agenda.

"If there is an issue that needs to be brought out and vented, then let that happen," he said. "I like the idea that if two council members want to bring something to the attention of the full council, (they can). I'm in favor of leaving things the way they are."

Journalist: It's Not the Tab Size, It's the Table Talk

OPEN MEETINGS -- Marsha Sutton, a freelance writer covering education issues in San Diego County, says on SDNN.com that she's "struggling with this pseudo-controversy" about how much public funds school officials spent on a Washington, DC dinner recently.

Sutton notes that San Diego Unified School District superintendent Terry Grier spent $350 on a dinner for himself, two others from his staff, and three school board members.

The six were in D.C. on school district business, and this $350 dinner, along with other travel expenses, may have been charged to the wrong accounts. Specifically, Grier may have dipped into a pot of federal money meant exclusively for low-income students, to pay for his travel expenses and lobbying efforts. The amount in dispute is reportedly about $2,000.

No question that the $2,000 needs to be charged to the correct account. But some perspective is needed. Two thousand dollars is less than .001 percent of the district’s total budget.

Yes, I understand - $2,000 here, $2,000 there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money. And there is the principle of the thing, to be sure.

But the bigger problem that shouts out at me is that we have three trustees sitting around a dinner table with their superintendent, all discussing … what? What are they discussing?

What could they possibly be talking about but school district business? Unless they are incredibly gifted at self-surveillance and friendly restraint, they’ve got to be gabbing—at least in part—about their schools, budgets and education policy.

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So I’m less troubled by the measly cost of this dinner tab than I am by the fact that three trustees and a superintendent were all sitting at the same table at the same time—presumably without public notification. And unless they were discussing gardening or the weather, they just shouldn’t do that—no matter who is paying the bill.

Purchase Option Leads to Brown Act Challenge

OPEN MEETINGS -- A local residents group today threatened a lawsuit if the City of San Juan Capistrano does not withdraw from plans to buy 116 acres of open space now owned by Crystal Cathedral Ministries, reports the Orange County Register.

Under a plan announced in January, 170 acres of Rancho Capistrano in northwest San Juan would be split in three. The city said it is prepared to spend $10 million for 116 acres. Continuing Life Communities would buy 34 acres to develop an upscale assisted living/retirement community. Crystal Cathedral would keep 20 acres for a retreat and chapel.

Three residents sent a letter to the city attorney today alleging that the purchase agreement, which gives San Juan the option to buy its portion of the property, was drafted in violation of California's Ralph M. Brown Act, which requires that public business be conducted in open meetings.

The residents are former Mayor Roy Byrnes, aerospace engineer Jim Reardon and Kim Lefner, who was active in the recall of two Capistrano Unified School District trustees in 2006.

"This (purchase agreement) was never on the agenda of any public session of the City Council, the RDA (Redevelopment Agency) board or the city's Open Space Committee … at any time prior to the Jan. 20 meeting," the letter states. "Far from being a technicality, this is an egregious violation of (the) law."

Mayor Mark Nielsen said the letter represents a "misunderstanding or mischaracterization."

"This whole project is just in the beginning phases," he said. "This project still has to go through all the public hearings, all the public discussion and dialogue. The statements of fact in that letter are incorrect. Nothing was hidden."

The actual acquisition of land would take place over the next four to five years, according to a city announcement in January. However, the option agreement pulled the land from the open market.

The Brown Act provides that those seeking court action to nullify unlawfully secret decisions must first send the suspect government body a written notice spelling out the alleged violation of the law and demanding a cure and correction.  If they fail to do so within a certain deadline—in this case 90 days from the date of the challenged decision—they cannot go to court to have the decision undone.

San Diego D.A. Reviewing Surprise Appointment

OPEN MEETINGS -- The San Diego District Attorney's Office is looking into whether the Imperial Beach City Council may have violated the Brown Act by appointing a former mayor to fill a vacancy created by the death of a city councilman three days before. 

As reported by the San Diego Weekly Reader,

On June 9, Leon Schorr of the San Diego County district attorney’s office informed city attorney Lough that the City is under investigation for violating the Brown Act -- the government statute that insures public access to local government meetings and deliberations.

“We got some complaints from the general public about the appointment,” said Schorr in a June 10 phone interview.

Those complaints stem from a May 26 notification sent out by the city clerk of Imperial Beach to a local paper, requesting applications to fill the vacant council seat. The next day, at a special meeting intended to “consider filling the vacancy,” mayor Jim Janney informed the council that Rose had contacted him and volunteered to fill the position. The council then agreed to appoint the former mayor.

“There was no mention at all or any intent given in the agenda that Rose was to be appointed that evening,” read the complaint submitted to the district attorney’s office. “The intent of the agenda was to decide on how to fill the vacant seat by holding a special election or an open application process. There was no mention of filling that seat at the May 27 meeting.”

As for the investigation by the district attorney’s office, Schorr says his office has to wait until the City of Imperial Beach releases the official record of the June 3 council meeting before his office can determine whether or not the appointment is valid.

Some Cry Foul at Quick Vacancy Appointment

OPEN MEETINGS -- An Imperial Beach City Councilman died Sunday. At a special meeting Wednesday night, at the mayor's suggestion, the council appointed a former mayor to fill the vacancy. 

But the meeting's posted agenda mentioned no more than the city manager's report on the appointment/election options, and the city clerk had taken out an ad in a newspaper announcing applications to be considered for the appointment. 

Some residents don't understand what the hurry was, reports the Voice of San Diego, and believe the surprise  appointment violated the Brown Act.

Open Meeting Laws Roundup

OPEN MEETINGS -- A bill to clarify the ban on serial meetings of state boards and commissions has passed the Assembly; the Marin County District Attorney is investigating a Brown Act complaint by a resigned school board member; a Ventura school trustee accuses colleagues of an unlawful serial meeting; and a nonprofit organization has praised a small city council for handling a conflict of interest issue openly.

Court: Meeting Law Open to Constitutional Attack

OPEN MEETINGS/FREE SPEECH -- A federal appellate court held Monday that the Texas Open Meetings law may infringe officials' free speech rights to communicate with one another privately, reports the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

In a relatively brief opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans (5th Cir.) held that elected officials have First Amendment rights to speak to each other in private. As a result, open meetings laws that prohibit private speech between elected officials have to pass stringent constitutional muster, the court said.

The case centers on two city council members who were prosecuted for violating the law by privately e-mailing each other. Their alleged crime was “acting as a quorum in exchanging private emails discussing whether to call a council meeting to consider a public contract matter,” according to the court.

The district attorney eventually dropped the charges in the case, but the council members argued in federal court that the law violated their First Amendment rights.

The trial court found that as elected officials, the council members' speech was not protected by the First Amendment. The appellate court found otherwise.

“The Supreme Court’s decisions demonstrate that the First Amendment’s protection of elected officials’ speech is robust and no less strenuous than that afforded to the speech of citizens in general,” Judge James Dennis wrote for the three-judge panel.

The unanimous appellate court then sent the case back to the trial court for review. It said the trial court had not properly considered whether the statute was constitutional under the “strict scrutiny” standard, and that it should do so now.

That standard requires that, if it will interfere with protected speech, a regulation must be narrowly tailored to advance a substantial government interest. Few laws are upheld as constitutional under this test.

However, the court said that determination in this case must first be made by the federal trial court.

The Texas attorney general’s office was a defendant in the council members' lawsuit. A spokesman for the office said: “We are evaluating our options on further appeal,” and for now the law remains in effect. The court's ruling, if allowed to stand, could lead to challenges of open meetings laws in other states as well.

Maybe, but rules prohibiting officials (with some exceptions) from having secret discussions on public issues they are elected to decide are likely to withstand strict scrutiny, once it is noticed that the precedents the court here relies on are about restricting public speech—communicating openly to the community at large.  Californians who take an oath to uphold the law as a condition of taking office on a local board or council make a commitment to abide by the Brown Act, which regulates the time, place and manner of their communications with one another, but makes no topic off-limits for their comments to one another or to the community. 

The Brown Act is moreover undergirded by a state constitutional provision that places, on the same plane of gravity as speech, petition, assembly or privacy, the right of "access to information concerning the conduct of the people's business," dictating that "therefore, the meetings of public bodies and the writings of public officials and agencies shall be open to public scrutiny."

In any event, it's not clear from the few factual specifics in the opinion precisely what got these officials indicted, but it could be a tempest in a teapot. The plaintiffs were two of the four council members—a quorum—that were involved in the e-mail discussion; the other two, says this report, were given immunity for testifying against their colleagues before the grand jury. But if all the four were up to in their e-mail was discussing whether to put something on the agenda for a public meeting, one strains to see the big deal. Doing this is a lawful process in California when deciding whether to call a special meeting—one held at a different time or place from the routine meeting calendar.  The Brown Act says this decision can be made by either the presiding officer or a majority of the body. 

Government Code Section 54956. A special meeting may be called at any time by the presiding officer of the legislative body of a local agency, or by a majority of the members of the legislative body, by delivering written notice to each member of the legislative body and to each local newspaper of general circulation and radio or television station requesting notice in writing.

Obviously a majority's discussion whether to call a special meeting not only needn't (see emphasized language) but couldn't be confined to an open meeting, because that would lead to an infinite regress: special meetings called to decide whether to call special meetings called to decide . . . The notion that elected officials could be indicted for this use of e-mail shows how zealously transparency-minded Texas prosecutors and grand juries can be—and maybe how shortsighted is their legislature for setting this kind of trap in the first place.

Mayor: Stand Down or "We have an officer"

OPEN MEETINGS -- The Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office won’t file charges against Scotts Valley Mayor Randy Johnson for having ruled a citizen speaker out of order and referring to the presence of a police officer at the April 15 council meeting, reports Press-Banner.com.

Fervent Target opponent Paul Bach, who heads the Responsible Local Development political action committee, filed a complaint under the Ralph M. Brown Act after Johnson stopped him from talking about campaign finance by mentioning the presence of a police officer.

“It appears that Mr. Bach believed that his right to speak at the meeting was cut off due to the content of what he was speaking on,” Assistant District Attorney Kelly Walker said Tuesday, April 28. “The city’s explanation was that he did not follow procedure.”

Bach had spoken for five minutes during public comment time about a proposed Target development and requested that Johnson and Councilman Dene Bustichi recuse themselves from all Target-related discussion and voting. “He had a chance to talk about that until he was blue in the face,” Johnson said.

Later in the meeting, under an agenda item discussing Target landowner Title Two Investment Corp., Bach continued talking about a potential conflict of interest between a campaign contributor to Bustichi and the Target project.

The council requires speakers to keep their comments to items on the agenda after the general public comment time.

After Bach and Bustichi interrupted each other several times, Johnson answered Bach:
“Believe me, we’re not going there, and if you wish to proceed we have an officer that can handle that.”

He Wants Brown Act Rules in the Capitol

OPEN MEETINGS -- A Republican Assemblyman has introduced a bill to apply the Brown Act's meeting agenda posting rules to the Legislature.  But ACA 8 is a constitutional amendment measure, and he'll need most of the Democrat majorities in both houses (two two thirds votes) to get it on the ballot.  The bill now sits in the Assembly Rules Committee, where it has yet to be further assigned.

The state constitution's open Legislature rules now say that meetings of each house and committee must be open to the public, except when held to consider specified matters, including employment and personnel, security, advice from legal counsel, and caucus matters. They also state that that no bill may be passed unless read by title on three days in each house, but the house may suspend thiis rule by a two thirds roll call vote.  Finally, they prohibit a bill from being passed until, with amendments, it has been printed and distributed to the members.

ACA 8 would further require a house or committee. at least 72 hours before a regularly scheduled meeting, to post an agenda containing a brief general description of each item to be considered, including items to be considered in closed session. The measure would also:

• generally prohibit consideration of any matter not included in the agenda; require public disclosure of a writing provided to members of a house or a committee in connection with the consideration of agenda items unless the writing is exempt from the mandatory disclosure requirements imposed by statute;
• require each agenda for a regular committee meeting to provide an opportunity for members of the public to directly address the committee on an item of interest to the public, before or during the committee's consideration of the item, that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the committee; provide for the calling of a special or emergency meeting of the house or a committee upon specified notice to its members and the media; and
• prohibit the passage of a bill in either house until the bill with amendments has been printed
• and distributed to the members of the house at least 24 hours beforethe vote in that house on passage of the bill.

Author Kevin Jeffries (R-Lake Elsinore), a veteran member of several local agency boards and commissions, says what local officials have been grumbling for as long as the Brown Act has been around: that the Legislature imposes on local government several transparency standards that lawmakers in Sacramento have been unwilling to meet themselves. His newsletter says the provisions of ACA 8 would, among other things, "stop the current situation in which the general public and even legislators are kept in the dark about details of legislation until the last possible moment."

Lawyer: Council's $13K Bailout an Illegal Surprise

OPEN MEETINGS -- The Porterville City Council broke the law last week when it voted to bail out the Exchange Club’s Fourth of July fireworks show with a $13,000 infusion of cash without alluding to such action on the agenda, a Sacramento-based media lawyer told the Porterville Recorder, the newspaper reported yesterday.

Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, said there’s no question about it: Council members ran afoul of the state’s open meetings law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, on April 7. City officials disagree.

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The April 7 City Council agenda included an item titled “Council Member Request — Status of Exchange Club of Porterville’s Annual Fourth of July Community Fireworks Show.” The three-sentence staff report offered a brief history of the show and noted the cancelation.

No staff recommendations were made.