Shocking news out of Bell

The city that doesn't know how to follow the state's opening-meetings law also doesn't know how to follow the state's public records act, the LA Times reports.

Bell and the Brown Act

It's unlikely that anyone in the city of Bell wants to see the City Council reconsider its decision slash the exorbitant salaries of its four highest paid members by 90 percent. But someone probably could.

That's because the Bell City Council almost certainly violated the state's open-meetings law at least twice - and probably three times - in the course of Monday's raucous meeting (hear more about the meeting here).

First, the council headed into closed session to discuss several potential lawsuits stemming from the salary scandal without first allowing the public to speak. Then, the council voted to make the salary cuts without first letting the public speak. Finally, agenda item that was supposed to alert the public that council salaries might be slashed made no mention that a vote would be taken.

 All of these are potential violations of the state's open-meetings law, known as the Brown Act, which requires, among other things, that the public be allowed to speak before any final decision is made. Bell's own agenda spells this out (the .pdf version is here): "Pursuant to the Ralph M. Brown Act, public comments may be received on these items prior to the time action is taken by the City Council."

Even a court agreed the violations occurred, the punishment would hardly fit the crime: A judge would probably be forced to rescind the vote and restore the salaries until the council acted in the right way.

But even technical violations of the law should be pointed out to ensure the public learns it's rights. Also, it was clear the hundreds of people who attended Monday's meeting wanted the council members to hear their displeasure before any action was taken. Indeed, most speakers wanted the council members to resign.

Is anyone going to sue to force the council to redo the vote? Doubtful. But this does serve as evidence that the council, whatever it is paid, still doesn't understand it's role as a representative government.

Francke advice about Bell

In the last few decades, First Amendment attorney and government-watchdog Terry Francke has done more to make small-town newspaper reporters better journalists than just about anyone else I can think of. He has generously offered his expertise to anyone who has his number, me included, and that has enabled reporters digging at the edges of local corruption to get inside scandals using tools like the public records to pressure obstinate city officials.

It comes as no surprise, then, that Francke sees the Bell corruption scandal as a direct result of the disappearance of small-town newspapers. Here he is in the Voice of OC:

...the Bell spectacle is what happens to communities without their own old-fashioned diligent news coverage by veteran newspaper reporters, or at least smart reporters led by veteran newspaper editors. The result need not be on paper, but it must be done with the community memory and professional savvy almost unique to newspaper-trained journalists with experience watching small-town politics.

 Francke argues that laws such as the Brown Act, which requires city agencies to discuss their business in public, do little to protect against the excesses of a Bell city council unless someone trained in its workings is on hand to act as a watchdog:

...the long absence of a community newspaper covering the city closely left Bell not a perfect storm but a perfect swamp. The Brown Act, cultivated over more than a half century by the newspaper industry, virtually assumes that newspaper reporters will be on hand to use it in scrutinizing government behavior. But even reporters require a bit of periodic training to help them decode agendas and read between the lines of official meeting bureaucratese that the Brown Act is just vague enough to permit as barriers to ordinary citizens.

What's needed by Bell -- or any newspaperless town that wants to avoid becoming another Bell -- is steady, consistent coverage by competent observers with journalistic talents and instincts (whatever their publication medium or platform) and some rules better than what the Brown Act now provides.

While Francke would like to see some reforms in open-meeting laws to boost transparency, he thinks it's unlikely they'd get by the government lobbies in Sacramento. The best solution, he says, is for Bell residents to turn their anger into organization:

The nice thing about small towns like Bell is that getting enough signatures to put such a reform on the ballot is a smaller task as well. If even half the people who have been storming Bell council meetings in recent days to protest the revealed abuses were to organize into a sunshine ordinance drafting and circulation committee, they could literally write (and pass) their own ticket to a transparent city hall.

*Update: City and state officials are gathering in Sacramento to talk about ways to make the pay of city officials more transparent. At this point, it feels more like a distraction from the stalled budget debate than a real effort at reform.

Carson City Council's muted meetings

California's open-meeting laws ensure the public has a right to speak at city meetings. But the mayor of Carson has taken to hitting the mute button, and that's prompted the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office to open an investigation, the Daily Breeze reports.

Carson City Attorney Bill Wynder is supposed to advise the council on the law, but chose to punt on the question of whether the mute button is a violation:

"I do not believe the mute button has been used in a way that violates the Brown Act but that's not my decision to make," Wynder said. "That's up to the District Attorney's Office. We'll give them the information they request."

(found via LA Observed)

Judges says LA City Council might have violated law

On Monday, a judge tentatively ruled that the Los Angeles City Council had violated the state's open meeting laws when it approved plans for a huge mall in South Los Angeles.

Essentially, the judge found the vote came without ample warning to the public - something that happens often as the council relies on "special meetings" for routine business.

If the judge holds to his initial ruling, the council would likely have to put the project back on the agenda and hold another vote.

I'm not impressed by you either

For those of you following the FOIA saga between LA Impact and Chris Bray, here's LA Impact attorney Christy O'Donnell's e-mail response to Bray:

Mr. Bray:

Correspondence has already been drafted to your October 20, 2008 letter and will be sent out via U.S. Mail advising you of your appointment next Thursday, October 30, 2008 at 7:00 am at LA IMPACT, and also addressing your allegations of Brown Act violations which lack merit and are less then professional. Thus, as they are addressed in my correspondence I will not waste my clients money repeating them here.

'I am not impressed by you'

In a letter that's just begging to become an exhibit in a court case, former reporter Chris Bray responds to the foot dragging of LA Impact attorney Christy O'Donnell in filling his request for some basic public records from the agency.

This might be the first time that the countywide narcotics task force has been asked to turn over public documents since Bray and government watchdog Richard McKee won a court order requiring LA Impact to come out of the shadows and comply with California's open-records and open-meetings laws.

Bray writes:

I requested public documents from your client, a public agency. State law gives public agencies ten days to respond to such requests. L.A. Impact received my request -- my second request, by the way -- on September 9, 2008 (see enclosed photocopy of U.S. Postal Service "Domestic Return Receipt," labeled as Document 1). Your letter of October 14 begins, "This letter will confirm our receipt of your correspondence, dated September 8, 2008..." (see enclosed photocopy of your October 14 letter, labeled as Document 2). No explanation for your delayed response follows. Should I wish to argue that L.A. Impact does not comply with the terms of the California Public Records Act, your own letter serves as the plainest evidence of that fact.

-snip-

[O]n Wednesday, October 15, 2008, we exchanged email in which I asked for an appointment this week to review public records at your client's office. You responded at 9:36 a.m. on that day that you would contact your client and arrange such an appointment for me. It is now 8:45 a.m. on Monday, October 20, and I have not heard from you. You had most of the day Wednesday, and all of Thursday and Friday, to arrange an appointment at a public agency to review simple public records that should be easily available.I am requesting an opportunity to review the recent agendas and minutes of a local legislative body, a set of records that any City Clerk in the state would instantly provide to me over the counter without an appointment. This is not hard.

I am not impressed by you. Do your job.

Any reporter who's faced a public agency's clumsy stonewalling will feel a tinge of recognition in reading the entire correspondence between Bray and O'Donnell.

The thin blue line of transparency

Way back when I wrote for newspapers, I reported on a narcotics task force formed by a group of L.A. County police chiefs called LA Impact. The police chiefs met in private to set policy for and distribute funds from task force investigations. Government watchdogs Richard McKee and Chris Bray said the police chiefs - who had expressed an interest in branching out from narcotics to domestic terrorism - had to meet in public. McKee and Bray took the cops to court and the court said the cops were breaking the law.

Flip the calendar forward a few years and Bray, who now teaches history at UCLA, got an itch to see if the police chiefs were still following the law. He sent the LA Impact governing board a letter requesting minutes from past meetings and notification of future meetings (which appear to be being held at the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District building in Santa Fe Springs). Such requests are routinely made of California's city councils and school boards and most comply. LA Impact's lawyers did their best to do the bare minimum.

Bray responds:

Thanks for your prompt reply to my request. I had hoped that LA Impact minutes and agendas were created and stored as Word files, or something similar, and could be emailed as attachments with very little cost or hassle to your client. But I would be happy to spend time in the LA Impact office instead, even if it is a substantial time commitment for us all. If I'll be required to travel to the office to read minutes every time there's a meeting of the Board of Directors, perhaps we can come up with a regular appointment time for those frequent visits. In the meantime, I'd like to schedule any morning next week after nine a.m. to review the requested minutes. I plan to read them carefully and methodically, so I may need to visit the LA Impact office quite a few times in the coming days.

Read all the letters the here.