MTA May Have Broken Law on Open Meetings, Experts Say

Last September, as they prepared for what ultimately became Southern California’s longest and most expensive transit strike in more than two decades, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s directors took a far-reaching step that may have violated the state’s open meeting law.

They secretly authorized a $5-million contingency fund for strike expenses, including $1 million to be spent on an advertising and public relations campaign, much of it anti-union.

That decision, according to legal experts, may have violated California’s open meeting law, which allows for private meetings but only under certain conditions.

From Aug. 24 to Oct. 26, as contract negotiations continued with the United Transportation Union, which represents 4,400 bus and train operators, the MTA directors did not hold a single public meeting. Instead, they repeatedly conferred privately in telephone conference calls, often several times a day.

Although it has never been publicly disclosed, The Times has confirmed that in one of those conference calls, on Sept. 21, the board authorized increasing from $3 million to $5 million a special strike contingency fund that had been hidden in the MTA’s annual budget. The contingency fund was never identified in the agency’s $2.5-billion annual spending plan.

Neither the increase in the strike fund nor any other specific item on which the directors deliberated during that secretive two-month period was posted in public, as required by the Ralph M. Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law.

Terry Francke, general counsel for the California First Amendment Coalition, said that he does not believe the MTA “followed the procedures mandated in the Brown Act for conference call meetings. I don’t believe the discussion or action increasing the agency’s own strike fund . . . has any place in any kind of closed session.”

Francke said the MTA failed to comply with the Brown Act’s provisions and violated the state’s open meeting law. Francke’s Sacramento-based organization is supported by media organizations and others interested in 1st Amendment free press issues, including access to public records and meetings of state and local government agencies.

MTA counsel Steven Carnevale defended as legal the transit agency’s private meetings and actions taken behind closed doors and during telephone conference calls.

“As long as it is directly related to the labor negotiations, what they did was permissible,” Carnevale said. “It was part and parcel of the labor negotiations taking place at the time.”

Carnevale said the board “authorized some additional expenditures” under MTA Chief Executive Julian Burke’s general authority to approve contracts.

At a closed-door executive session at MTA headquarters on June 22, eight days before expiration of the drivers’, mechanics’ and clerks’ contracts, the board voted to increase Burke’s authority to sign contracts from a maximum of $200,000 to $500,000.

That item was not listed on the public agenda for the closed session meeting. Instead, the document listed “Conference with Labor Negotiator,” the name of the negotiator and the initials of the unions involved.

After the session, it was announced that the board had “approved by a 3-2 vote delegating to the CEO contracting authority not to exceed $500,000 for any one contract, with certain restrictions to continue necessary MTA functions, affected by threat of strike.”

The Brown Act states that closed sessions with a local agency’s designated representative regarding salaries or fringe benefits may include “discussion of an agency’s available funds and funding priorities, but only insofar as these discussions relate to providing instructions to the local agency’s designated representative.”

California’s open meeting law also states that if a local agency “elects to use teleconferencing, it shall post agendas at all teleconference locations. . . . Each teleconference location shall be identified in the notice and agenda of the meeting or proceeding, and each teleconference location shall be accessible to the public.”

MTA board secretary Michele Jackson said notices of the closed session were posted on the agency’s Web site and on the ground and third floors of the MTA’s Gateway Center headquarters, which was open for limited hours during the strike.

But those notices did not disclose that the closed session was taking place by telephone conference call nor did they list a location of the closed session other than the boardroom at MTA’s Gateway Center headquarters.

Jackson said she recalled some discussion on Sept. 21 about spending. However, “I don’t think there was ever a motion,” she said. “I don’t think there was a formal action taken.”

How, then, was the strike contingency fund increased by millions of dollars?

Jackson said she could not discuss what took place behind closed doors.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

MTA Strike Fund

Directors of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority voted during a secret telephone conference call in September to increase a special contingency fund for strike-related expenses from $3 million to $5 million. Those expenses included:

Labor negotiators: $901,200

Communications: $569,999

Advertising: $482,025

Consultants: $295,217

Pasadena Hilton: $232,221

Total: $2,480,662

Note: Expenses are estimated through Oct. 16. An additional $1.37 million was projected as the cost for extra security at MTA bus yards and facilities during the transit strike, which lasted from Sept. 16 to Oct. 18.

Source: MTA