City Violates Brown Act, Doesn't Care

Gary Silbiger

In 1953 California enacted the Brown Act which proclaims, "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 their 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".

For at least the last decade, at the yearly reorganization of the City Council in April or May, the Council (and Redevelopment Agency) choose 1 or 2 of its 5 members to sit on multi-agency committees and Culver City Council Committees. This article focuses solely on the Council Committees.

For instance, at the City Council meeting on May 9th of this year, the Council members apponted its own members to 17 separate committees, whose meetings are kept secret from the community. The public has absolutely no input into these secret committees, which simply prepare the full Council for its inevitable final recommendations. Some of these crucial existing committees include auditing, economic development, animal services, sustainability, regional development and traffic mitigation, oil, agenda formating, youth advisory committee, affordable housing, and committees for each of the redevelopment agency areas. A lot of important discussions take place during these exclusive meetings. Although there are community members who are experts in our City, we lose their valuable input.

The "Council Subcomittees" described above meet at secret times in City Hall - as if they were discussing foreign intelligence items or preventing terrorist attacks - with no public notification or public particiation. Only Council members and staff are privy to these meetings. After the conclusion of the meeting, no notes are taken or posted. The City calendar on its website never includes these meetings - as though they do not exist. This merry-go-round continues its circle at the subsequent meetings, again avoiding the participation of the very people who have the expertise and interest in making the work of the committees relevant.

Californians Aware, the leading Brown Act watchdog group in our state, challenged the 20 "ad hoc" committees used by the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART), which then agreed in May of this year to either go public or be dissolved. Around the same time, Californians Aware approved filing suit against the Orange County cities of Costa Mesa and Aliso Viejo for their closed "working groups" made exclusively of Council members.

When I addressed the City Council of Culver City at a meeting a few months ago, I pointed out that standing committees of a legislative body that have a continuing subject matter jurisdiction (such as Culver City's), as opposed to a temporary purpose, are subject to the Brown Act. Although both the City and Council members were placed on notice that they were violating the law, no City follow up has occurred. Yet the Council agendas are generally very light with plenty of time for this discussion to happen. The public continues to be ignored

Until the Council instructs the City employees to always include full transparency, and at the same time learns that including the public leads to better proposals, the laws will continue to be violated. Laughing at the law is detrimental to Culver City - and illegal..

Culver City should immediately declare all of its Council Committees open to full public participation. Don't disband needed Committees; make them democratic. Agendize the topic of the best way to encourage Council/Public joint committees, including which committees are needed. The Council must trust its constituents to do the right thing. With this joint venture, the Committees listed above will become vital and exciting.

Gary Silbiger is the Co-Editor of the Culver City Progress Blog and the Former Mayor of Culver City.