POLL: Should Our Cities Continue to Post Agendas?

Last month, the that local jurisdictions—cities, counties, school districts, water districts and special districts—post meeting agendas for the public. The suspension also allows local jurisdictions to forgo reporting to the public about actions taken during closed-session meetings.

How many California municipalities will choose to set aside the transparency mandates is unknown. Neither city nor school district officials  indicated that Los Altos or Los Altos Hills will change anything.

The Los Altos School District board will likely put the question on an upcoming agenda, said board President Mark Goines. "My personal viewpoint is that we will continue to be open and transparent," he said, adding that the board will begin broadcasting its meetings in September.

Both the mayors of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills said nothing would change as far as city meetings were concerned, as well. 

"The Los Altos City Council and City staff are committed to being as transparent as we can be to ensure that our residents and other stakeholders are kept fully informed on issues that matter to them," said Val Carpenter, mayor of Los Altos.

Los Altos Hills Mayor Rich Larsen, wrote an e-mail from vacation: "Los Altos Hills will continue to post meeting agendas and report out as appropriate. We have no current plans to change our practices."

Bullis Charter School Chairman Ken Moore also said he expected "BCS to continue its current practice regarding posting agendas and reporting out of closed sessions."

How the state came to the decision of suspending the Brown Act mandates boiled down to one thing: money. In California, mandates placed on local jurisdictions by Sacramento must be funded by the state. In the case of the Brown Act mandates, the state was subsidizing nearly $100 million a year by some estimates.

So in an effort to cut expenditures, the state decided to suspend the mandates. 

But according to watchdog Californians Aware—a group that tries to foster improvement of, compliance with and public understanding and use of, public forum law, which deals with what rights citizens have to know what is going in in government—local jurisdictions learned how to milk the system.

They “could get a windfall of cash for doing something they had always done: preparing and posting meeting agendas for their governing and other bodies as mandated by Brown Act amendments passed in 1986—but as, in fact, routinely done anyway since time immemorial to satisfy practical and political expectations,” the nonprofit reported Friday.

In the meantime, the suspension could last through 2015, so it appears the public will need to demand transparency from its representatives if it wants to stay informed.