It’s the People’s Business

Pity that voters should need to chisel into the state Constitution their right to see the people’s business conducted in public. But they do.

California laws require that legislative bodies meet publicly, openly and with adequate notice and that the public have access to their reports, memorandums and other documents. Still, as stringent as these laws are, some officials have become adept at shutting the door on the people in whose name they govern, mostly because deciding issues in private is less trouble for them.

A 2002 Times analysis, for example, found that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors had made 90% of its decisions during the preceding year without any public comment or input. County Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen met weekly with each supervisor individually to discuss the board’s agenda for that week and the supervisors’ deputies met regularly to debate upcoming items. Neither the meetings with Janssen nor the deputies’ gatherings were open to the public, yet substantive issues were discussed.

Complaints that Orange County lawmakers have violated the open meeting laws have surfaced as well in recent years, focusing on the Newport Beach and Costa Mesa city councils and the Orange Unified School District.

The Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s first law parting the curtains on public agencies, is now 50 years old. The Legislature would best honor the Assembly speaker for whom it was named by sending SCA 1 to voters. This proposed constitutional amendment, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco), faces one final Assembly vote, most likely in January, before it could head to voters on either the March or November ballot.

The measure wouldn’t stop lawmakers from seeking ways to sidestep the law, but it would correct court and agency interpretations of existing meetings and records laws that have chipped away at public access. It would reaffirm the principles first announced in the 1953 Brown Act, namely that “the people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them.... The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.” The proposed amendment instructs courts and government lawyers to broadly interpret any new law expanding public access rights and narrowly construe any law limiting them.

A similar measure failed last year because some legislators worried that it might erode personal privacy or expose agencies’ confidential legal and personnel matters. The new version contains better protections on both counts. Legislators no longer have a reason to keep SCA 1 off the ballot.