Cities Vow to Keep Obeying the Brown Act : Budget: The Legislature’s partial suspension of the open meeting law leaves some officials wondering how it could have cost $2 million to keep the public’s microphone on.

Despite an unprecedented move by the California Legislature to suspend part of the open meeting law, government officials throughout Ventura County vowed Monday to continue posting meeting agendas 72 hours ahead of time, sticking to the agendas and allowing citizens to speak at the meetings.

The Legislature voted last month to cut the 1990-91 state budget, and among the deleted expenditures was a $2.03-million allocation required under the Brown Act to reimburse city and county governments for the cost of posting agendas.

This means that government bodies no longer have to abide by the provisions of the Brown Act requiring firm advance meeting agendas and opportunity for public comment during government meetings, said Robert Eich, director of the California Commission on State Mandates.

“This is the first time the budget has contained language of this type,” said Eich, whose commission oversees the enactment of state-mandated programs such as the Brown Act.

By Monday, Sen. Ralph C. Dills (D-Gardena), who sponsored the final version of the budget bill, already had presented an amended bill to the Appropriations Committee that would reinstate the suspended provisions of the Brown Act.

Other Senate staff are trying to figure how the Brown Act provisions could cost $2.03 million.

“What is ludicrous is that the state is paying for having a microphone open,” said Fred Silver, a fiscal aide to Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles). “And if it’s paying for it, what is it buying? Audiotape? One more Mylanta tablet in the belly of the chairman of the board of supervisors?”

Ventura City Clerk Barbara Kam said she believes most cities in Ventura County will follow the Brown Act provisions despite the suspension.

“I think the whole intent is to provide the public information, and I think most cities are inclined to do things the way we’ve been doing them since 1986” when these provisions of the Brown Act were passed, Kam said.

Nancy Dillon, city clerk of Thousand Oaks, said of the measure, “It’s really quite a shock.”

Dillon said she will keep posting agendas for city government meetings 72 hours ahead of time. And she said she expects the city will continue allowing people to speak out at public meetings.

But Dillon said the temporary suspension of the Brown Act provisions could make it easier for the Thousand Oaks City Council and other government bodies to add late-breaking business to their agendas in an emergency or to keep citizens from repeating comments that others have already made at public meetings.

“A lot of times, public concerns will take up an hour or two hours of hearings,” Dillon said. “It’s not fair to the developer or the person appealing some kind of project” to ask them and their attorneys and consultants to wait through an hour or two of public comments before they can state their business with the council, she said.

Clerks in Camarillo, Fillmore, Moorpark, Ojai, Oxnard, Port Hueneme, Santa Paula and Simi Valley said they too will abide by the Brown Act.

Ventura County Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg said he expects no change in the way county government meetings are announced or held.

“I am confident our board will continue giving notices,” he said. “The interesting thing is that they calculated $2 million in state savings from this. I don’t believe we’ve ever billed them for any posting of our notices. I just assumed that was our obligation.”

The Brown Act suspension was born in April, 1987, when the city of Los Angeles filed a claim with the state for reimbursement of $12,325 it had spent on posting agendas as required by the law, Eich said. It was the first such request filed after the Legislature voted in 1986 to require the 72-hour advance posting of agendas.

That year, the Commission on State Mandates began a study to learn how much the agenda postings would cost California, and made its report to the Legislature in July, 1989. The Legislature converted the results into a budget request for $2.03 million.

In January, Gov. George Deukmejian proposed cutting all state mandates, including the Brown Act provisions. Those provisions later were reinstated by the Legislature’s Financial Committee--and re-cut from the final version of the budget, which the governor signed on July 31.

While city clerks in Ventura County say they plan to ignore the suspension of the Brown Act provisions, the California First Amendment Coalition leveled harsh criticism against the measure on Monday.

“It’s absurd,” said Terry Francke, the coalition’s executive director. Francke said the measure demonstrates how the state’s budget-building process “can trigger an explosive overstatement of what are otherwise trifling expenses at the local level.”