Stop Eroding California’s Local Government Transparency Law

The Martinez City Council is meeting virtually in 2021. As we have learned during the pandemic, important interactions in local government decision-making have been lost during remote meetings.

Last year, we warned that California residents might soon see their local city councils, school boards or planning commissions meet entirely virtually.

In this scenario, residents might walk into, say, the council chambers of City Hall and find no one on the dais and policymakers on a screen mounted on the wall.

Some of our local leaders, with the cooperation of state legislators, are trying to make this surreal scenario a reality by chipping away at the state’s open meetings law for local government.

They didn’t reach the state legislature’s ultimate goal last year, but they’re doing it again, this time targeting transparency rules for boards that they say are merely advisory, but are often essential in the policy-making process.

They work to achieve government only by teleconference, during which members of the public and the press may never attend meetings in person, never be able to ask questions of board members, and never be able to observe the language bodily between them.

Our representatives would become nothing more than boxes on a video screen.

This scenario made sense during the height of the COVID pandemic, when social distancing was necessary to protect public health. But this was to be the exception and not the rule.

State senators are expected to stop Assembly Bill 817, introduced by Rep. Blanca Pacheco, D-Downey. It’s yet another step on the slippery slope toward local government secrecy — another attempt to weaken key provisions of the state’s open meetings law for local government.

law of 1953

The Ralph M. Brown Act was a 1953 response to reports that elected officials often conducted public business in private. At the time, members of a municipal council, for example, prepared their decisions in advance and then simply formalized them, often without discussion, at a public meeting.

The Brown Act was intended to ensure that government officials conducted their activities in public so that their constituents could observe them in action. Not just the final decision-making, but also the deliberative process that led to it.

Today, the Brown Act and the similar Bagley-Keene Act for state boards are under attack from government leaders who want to operate with less public oversight. Last year, the Legislature passed and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 544, which impedes public access to state agency advisory council meetings.

Pacheco’s AB 817 would do the same thing for local government “advisory” boards. But the boards affected by the bill are often not just innocuous groups that propose ideas for policymakers to adopt. Their meetings are often where difficult decisions are made.

We’re talking about panels like a city council budget subcommittee made up of representatives from the very body of elected officials who will make the final decision, a police review board, or an election commission.

The final “recommendations” of these “advisory” boards are often sent to a decision-making body – a city council, school board, or county board of supervisors – for quick and cursory ratification.

It is deliberations like those of these “advisory” councils that the Brown Act sought to expose to full sunlight. This is where the sausages are made – where public oversight is essential, where board members should not be able to hide in a virtual world.

As we learned during the pandemic, important interactions in local government decision-making were lost during remote meetings. Community groups were unable to demonstrate the extent of their support by the number of people in attendance. The public and media could not ask questions of board members and staff before and after meetings.

Undermining the compromise

Certainly, there are good reasons for remote participation of board members. People may have health issues or family emergencies that require video conferencing. But this should be the exception and not the rule.

In 2022, a coalition of open government advocates and state legislators developed legislation signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, balancing the need for transparency with legitimate situations where remote participation is understandable.

Assembly Bill 2449 limits remote participation by board members to no more than three consecutive months or 20% of meetings per year. At least a quorum of members of the legislative body must participate from a single public location, such as a city council chamber, where the public may be present.

But secrecy advocates, led by groups like the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties — groups that represent elected officials who find transparency a downside — continue to try to undermine the deal.