Patterson IrriGator: City Council may have skirted meeting laws
In the 1951, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Mike Harris spent six weeks looking into the way local agencies conducted meetings. State laws had required that business be done in public, but Harris discovered secret meetings or caucuses were common. He wrote a 10-part series on “Your Secret Government”, that ran in May and June of 1952.
Harris found elected officials, at all levels of government, who were outright contemptuous of the notion that their actions should be subject to public scrutiny.
Pay raises and layoff decisions were argued and decided in secret sessions. Major land-use policies and special favors for well-connected constituents were sometimes debated and settled without public notice or participation.
Sound familiar?
This was all suppose to change with the 1953 passage of the Ralph M. Brown Act, named after its author, a former Speaker of the state Assembly. Brown was a sharp but unpretentious lawyer from Modesto, who was considered a man of integrity in the lobbyist-controlled Capitol of the ’40s and ’50s.
As part of his law practice, Brown represented a group of Modesto nurses in labor negotiations with a public hospital in the early ’50s. After Brown thought he had a deal, the hospital directors reneged in a secret meeting.
The Brown Act said, “All meetings of the legislative body of a local agency shall be open and public and all persons shall be permitted to attend any meeting of the legislative body of a local agency except as otherwise provided in this chapter.”
Additionally, the Brown Act left us with these guiding principles:
- The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them.
- The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.
- The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.
Last week, the Patterson City Council made an enormous unethical mistake. Instead of being forthright with residents, they zigged and zagged around any attempt to make “the morris issue” transparent.
Are we asking too much by insisting that our elected officials follow these simple laws, that are meant to protect us, the residents, their constituents?
We happen to believe that they simply do not care for our opinion or input, and like the back door politicians of the 1950’s, they would rather have us butt out.
So what can we do?
Unfortunately, violating the Brown Act is a misdemeanor of which no one ever has been convicted. Many cities simply choose to ignore it, or interpret it to meet their own agenda, without any consequences.
We can continue to keep a close eye on the councils actions to ensure that they carry out the oath of which they swore.
We can support those who have bravely spoken out against the council for the benefit of us all.
We can support City Staff, whom because of our voting, have to deal with this inept leadership on a daily basis.
We can take back our city, by supporting and voting for individuals who will make decisions that best serve our city, rather than their political benefactors.
Lastly, we would like to thank the Patterson Irrigator, for not letting this story die, without a local newspaper, events like this would never be brought to light. If you haven’t read the article, please click here.
The Big Squeeze
October 19, 2009 · Filed under Patterson, city council, city of patterson, fred ross, patterson irritator · Tagged brown act, california attorney general, closed session, patterson ca, patterson city council, Patterson city staff, patterson mayor, public comment, smells, special meeting
According to the Brown Act, at every special meeting, the public must be given notice that describes the public’s right to comment.
We just reviewed the notice for the “special meeting” and there is no indication that the public was given such notice. Furthermore, even if the council retreats to closed session, the Attorney General advises that legislative bodies should afford the public an opportunity to comment on items prior to adjournment into closed session.
Bottom line:
Outside of any notice modification signaling the public’s right to speak before the council retires to closed session, it appears that the city may violate the Brown Act for not providing the public with proper notice. This violation may allow the contents of such meeting to be revealed for public review, despite it’s closed session status.
After the council returns from the closed session, they will have already decided whether to take action or not. This is the precise reason why the opportunity for public comment before closed session is so important. It’s your only chance to say something before the council makes a decision.
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