Cutting Down Secrecy

California’s Brown Act requires boards of supervisors, city councils, water districts, school boards and other local bodies to conduct business in public. The broad protections are good for democracy, but an action that violates the law can remain valid and secrecy is rarely, if ever, penalized. Those weaknesses need correcting.

Assembly Bill 2674 would strengthen the Brown Act and make it easier to enforce. The California Legislature should make it law.

The new legislation would require policy bodies to post a specific agenda at least three days before a regular meeting and one day before a special session. No items could be added during a meeting. The new requirement would prevent cunning council members from hiding controversial motions until the last moment. Exceptions would be made for genuine emergencies, and the exemption for discussing personnel matters would remain.

Had the changes been in effect last year, members of the Los Angeles City Council could not have sneaked through a motion for a 10% pay raise, identified only by number and not by topic, without public discussion or public notice.

Had the new enforcement provision been in effect, the council’s action could have been redressed without proof of criminal intent. Superior Court Judge Raymond Cardenas subsequently found that the process had violated the spirit, but not the letter, of the Brown Act. He struck down the pay raise, however, because he found that it violated a provision of the city Charter.

AB 2674 would allow any action, found in violation of the law by a court, to be declared void automatically. Sneakiness would no longer pay off. That is significant, because there is no record of a successful criminal prosecution of the Brown Act, according to Assemblyman Lloyd G. Connelly (D-Sacramento), one of the bill’s sponsors.

Connelly’s co-sponsor is Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra). That bipartisan support indicates that both Democrats and Republicans support the precepts of good government. The attorney general, the California District Attorneys Assn. and the League of Women Voters also support the measure. Common Cause, the citizens’ lobby, is the original sponsor.

A similar measure, sponsored by Connelly during the last legislative session, tightened up the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act, which governs meetings of state agencies just as the Ralph M. Brown Act governs meetings of local agencies.

Local officials may chafe at the new restrictions. They may protest that the requirements would slow government business. Secrecy may speed some decisions, but that efficiency is at the expense of democracy. AB 2674 deserves passage.