Grand Jury Report Is Rejected By City Council : Oxnard: Councilman Lopez calls the state open-meetings law a matter of interpretation. The jurors said 5 or 6 illegal meetings were held.

Saying they were acting on the advice of the city attorney, all five members of the Oxnard City Council rejected a Ventura County grand jury report on Tuesday that accuses them of violating the law by holding budget meetings behind closed doors.

In a report released Monday, the grand jury said that the council violated the state open-meetings law, known as the Brown Act, by holding five or six private meetings in September and October of 1989.

The grand jury decided not to indict council members because it said there was insufficient evidence to find that the council was aware of a violation.

The report defined the five or six private meetings as one violation and said it was the fourth time the council violated the Brown Act since 1987. The report did not detail the three other alleged violations. City Council members deny any violations occurred.

Councilman Manuel Lopez said in an interview Tuesday that the Brown Act is “a matter of interpretation” and added that “any action that we took we took with the advice and consent of the city attorney.”

City Attorney Gary Gillig was unavailable for comment because he is on vacation in Hawaii until next week. Assistant City Atty. Paula Kimbrell declined to comment on the grand jury report.

The report said the Oxnard City Council violated the Brown Act when it met in closed sessions purportedly to discuss personnel matters. Instead, the council discussed and took action on a budget-reduction package, the report said.

The 1953 Brown Act requires all government bodies to discuss and decide public matters before the public. It has several exceptions, however, including the discussion of personnel matters.

The report said council members “apparently reasoned that since the largest budget reductions were to come from personnel reductions . . . that the entire budget reduction plan . . . could be discussed in closed session pursuant to the personnel exception.

“Such reasoning is clearly wrong in our opinion,” the report said.

The report said that the personnel exception in the Brown Act is provided to allow government agencies to discuss the employment, dismissal or performance of individuals.

Mayor Nao Takasugi rejected the grand jury’s findings, saying the discussion of personnel matters, including a contract with the city’s firefighters association, required some discussion of the city budget.

“I don’t feel we had any sessions back there that did not meet the requirements of the Brown Act,” he said.

Takasugi acknowledged that the council did not discuss individual city employees when it met in closed session. But he said the council did discuss contract negotiations, which are allowed under the Brown Act’s personnel exceptions.

“If we violated the Brown Act, if this is so, then we violated the Brown Act because either the city manager or the city attorney asked us to go into the back to discuss something,” said Councilwoman Dorothy Maron.

Still, all five council members said they trust Gillig’s advice and don’t feel the grand jury report is a poor reflection on him.

City activist and longtime council critic Oscar Karrin said he has complained several times to the district attorney’s office, asking that it investigate alleged open-meeting violations in Oxnard.

“They should have known that they violated the Brown Act and the city attorney, if he didn’t advise them that they violated the Brown Act, he should be fired,” Karrin said.