As many Juice readers know I posted an extensive research series on local city entries in this year’s Tournament of Roses Parade. This effort was to question the justification and cost of the city of Mission Viejo entry while the State and County look for ways to avoid layoffs. The editor of one of our local city blogs, the Mission Viejo Dispatch, www.missionviejodispatch.com considered filing a lawsuit against the city for probable violations of the Open Meeting Law, more formally known as, the Ralph M. Brown Act. Another CA blog has picked up on this story. However, CalAware Today is not just another blog. Attorney/founder of Californians Aware Terry Francke is a public forum rights advocate and an expert in open meeting laws. His web site, where this story can also be found, is: www.calaware.org
While the focus of this CalAware story is about Mission Viejo it could also apply to any other city in Orange County or anywhere else for that matter.
His headline reads:”Californians’ rights to find out what’s going on, talk and write about it, and demonstrate or petition as needed”
Friday, December 19, 2008
Polling: Going to the Political Jury for a Verdict
OPEN MEETINGS — The Mission Viejo Dispatch reports a textbook example of the post facto casuistry used by too many local government leaders, enabled by their compliant lawyers, to duck clear requirements of the Brown Act.
City Councils are given discretion to deal with limited subjects in closed sessions, such as real property negotiations, employee evaluations, and litigation strategy. The law also creates a very narrow discretion for secrecy on any other matter while assigned to an ad hoc committee COMPRISED EXCLUSIVELY of a sub-majority (two members) of the Council. The MV Council admits a Brown Act violation would occur if additional persons, including residents, were members of a secretly operating ad hoc committee.
Ad Hocs are highly controversial because of the potential abuse. Many observers feel the Mission Viejo City Council routinely abuses the Ad Hoc process by referring issues into these secret committees which otherwise would have to be discussed publicly. Although Ad Hoc Committees cannot take final decisions or actions, extensive plans and agreements are completely formulated for quick and summary approval by the Council.
The Rose Float Committee became a legal issue when four residents were added secretly to the committee. The Council admits the addition of four residents as members would require the Committee to operate openly under the Brown Act, including 72-hour notice of meetings, posted agendas, public meetings, and minutes of the meetings. It also admits at least four residents participated on the Committee and concedes open Brown Act protocols were not followed.
In an e-mail response to a Dispatch query about the committee’s composition, Mayor Trish Kelley (who created the committee) stated, “In addition to me, the Ad Hoc Committee is Lance (MacLean, a Council member), Bob Breton, Ziggy Wilczynski, John Ben, Helen Workun. . . The members were chosen due to their past experience on Mission Viejo float involvement, or approached us with an interest in helping on the committee.”
Gilbert comment. The city of Mission Viejo was founded in 1988. Prior to this year the city has never entered a float. Therefore any “experience” has to go back between 20 to 30 years when the Mission Viejo Co was developing our community.
Breton is a former mayor who admitted being on the committee in a statement at a council meeting. The Dispatch demanded a correction to the apparent Brown Act violation, and the mayor issued a carefully scripted non sequitur denial (it makes no difference why non-council members are included on an ad hoc committee; the fact that they are subjects the committee to the Brown Act’s notice and open meeting requirements).
But instead of going to court, the Dispatch turned to the political jury for a verdict.
The Dispatch won’t sue the Mayor and City Council in court on Brown Act allegations of illegal secrecy, lies and coverup. Instead, readers are invited to act as a jury of peers by using the Open Meetings Poll below . . .
The issues before CalAware (and Juice) readers are:
° Were the four residents members of the Committee?
° Did Mayor Kelley and Councilman MacLean lie when they claimed, after the Brown Act charge, that residents were experts or consultants instead of members?
° Was the use of the terms “experts” or ”consultants” a coverup to avoid the Open Meetings Law and prevent transparency?
As of December 10, the Dispatch reported, 74 percent of the responses “believed Trish Kelley and Lance MacLean violated the Brown Act.”
The Brown Act is good law to promote open government. The problem is that government entities pay little heed to the law.
Government entities know that an expensive and time consuming law suit would be required to hold those electeds and staff responsible for violations accountable.
Thanks for pointing to the CalAware site. Very useful.
Some years ago, I’ve been using CA Public Records Act requests to get some documents from UC Irvine that the administration there tried to hide. They dragged their feet quite a bit, so much that I was considering a law suit…
While it is tough to prevail we had a Brown Act case victory in Mission Viejo that dealt with members who no longer serve on our council. The judge in that trial mandated that the city council tape record all Closed Session meetings for a period of two years. I believe that the Capistrano Unified School District CUSD had the same obligation in their case.