Helping Our Peninsula's Environment

Open Meeting Laws Overview

By David Dilworth, Aug 2002

President John F. Kennedy said -

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible,

make violent revolution inevitable."

Kennedy could well have been referring to open meetings and the strong zeal citizens have for voting out elected officials who trample on public participation at meetings. 

In a genuine democracy, you and I give authority to government to make decisions about our world. We do not need to pray to local politicians to condescend and allow us to participate. Consider this preamble to a California Open Meeting law- 

California Government Code Section 11120 - "It is the public policy of this state that public agencies exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business and the proceedings of public agencies be conducted openly so that the public may remain informed."

"In enacting this article the Legislature finds and declares that it is the intent of the law that actions of state agencies be taken openly and that their deliberation be conducted openly."

"The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created." 

This last paragraph is also contained word for word as the preamble to the Ralph M. Brown Act in California Gov. Code Section 54950 .

There are three state open meeting laws operating in California and one federal law. 

• The law covering local meetings is called the Ralph M. Brown Act in California Gov. Code Section 54950.
• The law covering meetings of state agencies like the Dept. of Fish and Game is called the Bagley-Keene Act.
• The law covering meetings of the state legislature is called the Grunsky Act.
• The Federal Agency Open Meeting law is called FACA - the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

• The right to a fair and thorough process, and
• The right to a fair decision based on facts and reasons.

Open meeting laws implement the right to a fair process by generally requiring at a minimum:

• Adequate and Clear Advance Notice of Meetings and Topics of Discussion and Decision.
• Public Attendance. 
• Meaningful Public Comment on all decisions. 
• While not always explicitly stated in open meeting laws, in the United States you always have a constitutional right to criticize the actions and inactions of the governmental body and its officials.

Some cities (their citizens actually), such as San Francisco, have adopted open meeting laws providing significantly greater public participation than the minimums required by state laws. San Francisco's is called the "Sunshine Act."

Recklessly flaunting President Kennedy's warning, governmental bodies routinely try to provide only the absolute minimum public participation they can get away with - below the meager minimums clearly required by law with penalties. In real meetings, they often try to get away with far less; they rarely even give you the paltry measures required by law.

What's worse - the longer a given agency gets away with it - the angrier they get when you try to claim your rights to participate. While pointing out to California city governments (Pacific Grove, Monterey and Carmel) that they need to let the public speak on every agenda item including Consent agenda items and Closed Session topics, it has been amusing to watch elected Council members resort to abuse of the public by evasion and name calling.

Eventually most of the agencies have grudgingly accepted allowing public comment on all items as standard practice.

As a general rule - If you cannot find at least one violation of open meeting law or CEQA on any agenda of a local government agency (city or county) - you simply haven't looked hard enough.

PLATE TOO FULL 

It is my opinion that agencies often put far too many items on any given agenda - forcing a very high rate of approvals and making public officials impatient with the public who want to take part in a reasonable decision. 

Genuine public participation in open meetings requires limiting the number of items on an agenda to those few which can comfortably allow the interested public to fully air their concerns.

When a controversial issue arises you can reasonably ask that it be continued to another meeting or that the other items on the agenda by continued so there is no pressure to decide the item hastily. As a wise teacher of mine, John Tolson, would say "Why do we always have time to do things over, but never enough time to do them right."

You might consider reminding government officials that no one ever lost their job or office by allowing too much Public Participation, but they can be successfully sued for failing to provide enough. Some open meeting laws even provide criminal penalties.

You might also consider participating in California's 2004 Open Government Conference.

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This Page Last Updated September 30, 2003