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February 10, 2004

Chair Ralph Rubio, and

Board Members of

AMBAG

Dear Mr. Rubio,

First, let us thank you for your attorney's letter admitting one violation of our Open Meeting law. (See AMBAG Counsel Jan 30 letter attached)

Unfortunately the action to correct this is inadequate (see below) so we respectfully request that AMBAG --

1.  Admit the Error and Apologize to the Public, and
2. To prevent this from reoccurring - immediately provide board members with Brown Act Training and offer yearly refresher courses - especially for new members.

We would also like to thank you for rescheduling the unnoticed and unagendized workshop. As we mentioned above, while in some cases this might be an adequate remedy, in this case it is considerably short of reasonably adequate in that -

1. Each AMBAG Board member still seems uninformed of their personal criminal (misdemeanor) risk for this violation of law, (this is astounding in light of AMBAG's Board representing the 21 leading legislative agencies across 3 Counties),
2. The presenter for increasing public participation, Ruth Vreeland, can not make her presentation again because of her untimely and tragic death,
3. AMBAG has made no attempt to even acknowledge our requests for remedy including -

• Apologize to the public for holding a meeting which prevented most of the public from participating,
• Making a commitment to never again hold such a meeting.

1. The public had to take action to inspire even the minimal remedy you are taking, and
2. AMBAG decided on the remedy without any communication with us.

The second issue is your Counsel's letter does not adequately address our second complaint. "Clarifying" something that did not occur is improper, as is substituting an irrelevant 45 minute staff presentation - instead of the approved Board Committee who creates their own agenda.

HOPE may conduct our own fact finding. If we do find that another Brown Act violation occurred as we described, we will file formal complaints.

The nature of a violation preceding that violation is as follows:

In a meeting on an unknown date after the October AMBAG meeting that decision was overturned by (I am informed) staff members and Chair Tony Campos. The decision was turned into an agenda item on the November meeting which said all AMBAG members would be on the "subcommittee" and instead of fact finding staff would make a presentation.

This was approved by the AMBAG board at the November meeting. At 6:00pm of January 14, 2004, the AMBAG Board met to hear the staff presentation described in the violation admitted by AMBAG above.

Again we respectfully request AMBAG:

• Formally withdraw the decision agendized at the November meeting.

• Rescheduling the agenda item agreed upon by vote at the October Meeting to allow full opportunity for informed comment by members of the public.

Respectfully,

S/ David Dilworth, Executive Director

PS Please note the Attorney General opinion that a 5 minute comment for each speaker is reasonable (75 ops. Cal. Atty. Gen. 89 -1992). HOPE requests that AMBAG equally allow time for each person's public comment - not 2 minutes for some and 20 minutes for others as occurred at the last AMBAG meeting.

_________________________________________________________________

Copies sent to: Donald G. Freeman
Joseph T. Francke, Legal Counsel, California First Amendment Coalition

Bill Lockyer, California Attorney General

Monterey & Santa Cruz County Grand Juries

Monterey County Herald

Coast Weekly

Santa Cruz Sentinel

Metro Santa Cruz
Monterey Peninsula League of Women Voters

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