Open government issues take front seat in Oceanside

By: BEN FRUMIN - Staff Writer | Saturday, September 3, 2005 11:09 PM PDT ∞

OCEANSIDE ---- It's a small, plain room with about a dozen maroon chairs, a glass-covered conference table, a wall-mounted white board and a television.

But while its appearance is modest, the room behind Oceanside's City Council chambers ---- commonly called "the backroom" by those in power ---- is far from being a place of insignificance.

That's because the secret conversations that are held there ---- on contracts with employee unions, out-of-court settlements and land deals, for example ---- have been known to have multimillion-dollar consequences for the city.

A state law known as the Ralph M. Brown Act calls for the meetings of legislative bodies to be open and public, though the law allows for certain items to be discussed in sessions that are closed to the public. Those closed-door topics include pending litigation, labor negotiations, certain personnel issues and property negotiations. While closed-door meetings on such issues are allowed by state law, they are certainly not required.

There now seems to be a philosophical divide on the role of the backroom in Oceanside politics, with some on the council lobbying to get deliberation on certain issues and into the public eye, while others defend the role of closed-door discussions in protecting city interests.

Council members Rocky Chavez and Shari Mackin have recently lobbied ---- thus far, unsuccessfully ---- to bring the discussion of a proposed sale of city-owned land occupied by the 17-story Marina Towers out of closed session and into a public hearing.

"It's very important that any of the public's business be done in the public view," Mackin said. "These are the public's assets."

Similarly, Chavez pushed successfully to bring into a public meeting the council's discussion of possibly assuming ownership of a small strip of private road at the entrance to Cavalier Mobile Estates. That issue was first discussed in closed session, but later brought into a public meeting before the council made any decisions.

Chavez and Mackin said last week that the burden of proof is on the government to explain why deliberation on certain issues ought to take place behind closed doors, and not on residents to prove that they have a right to that information.

"What's the big secret?" Mackin asked.

Other voices

Councilman Jack Feller said last week that closed session isn't about keeping secrets, but about making sure Oceanside doesn't lose its negotiating leverage by revealing key negotiating points in a public forum.

"You'll get a deal that's dead on arrival if you negotiate in open session," Feller said, adding that he supports the proposed Marina Towers sale because "government, most of the time, are poor property managers."

And while Councilwoman Esther Sanchez didn't support Mackin's motion last month to move the Marina Tower deliberations out of closed session for a public meeting, she said last week that she's just as much of an advocate of open government as Mackin.

"This is not special to Shari. This is special to the three of us," Sanchez said, referring to herself, Mackin and Mayor Jim Wood. "The three of us have been asking for open government."

As for the Marina Towers issue ---- a homeowners association representing 67 condo owners wants to buy the city land on which their homes sit before the tower also is converted to city property when the condo owners' leases expire in 2036 ---- Sanchez said the public has been well informed.

"There are no secrets here," Sanchez said. "There is no secret dialogue. It's all on the up and up."

Sanchez said it's standard procedure for the council to discuss possible land sales in the backroom, and that "if there was something wrong, I'd be the one yelling the highest."

Sanchez said she supports the proposed sale because it will bring Oceanside "millions and millions of dollars" that would be used to hire more police officers. Sanchez said Chavez and Mackin have tried to frame their opposition to the proposed sale as an issue of open government in order to rally support to their cause.

"It has nothing to do with the public's right to know," Sanchez said. "The public already knows."

But Mackin said her desire to hold a public hearing on the Marina Towers issue stems from past frustrations in her years as a community activist, when she said she had to fight tooth and nail to get information from the city.

Public records

In addition to lobbying for fewer backroom discussions, Mackin is also pushing for Oceanside to make several types of city documents more accessible in order to help residents get as much information as possible about their government. Sanchez said she's on board with Mackin's requests regarding public records.

Mackin wants "staff reports" and "backup material," both of which supplement the council's bare-bones agendas by fleshing out issues in pages upon pages of detail, to be placed in a binder kept on the table at the entrance of council chambers during meetings.

Those documents are already available to the public, though residents must request them from the city clerk's office and pay 10 cents a page for their own copies.

Mackin has called those charges "nonsense" and "outrageous," saying that before she was elected to the council, she was often frustrated with the cost of getting her hands on a variety of public records. The councilwoman said she once paid upward of $300 for a lengthy report on coastal issues.

To help cut down on those costs, and make it easier for residents to get public documents, Mackin said she also wants an archive of staff reports and backup material to be posted on the city's Web site.

Internet access

Such a system already exists, though it's only available to select city officials, said City Clerk Barbara Riegel Wayne.

Wayne said the offices of the city clerk, city attorney, city manager and council members have access to an internal online system, or intranet, on which they can search archives of council minutes, agendas, resolutions, ordinances, staff reports and backup material.

"You can do research from past staff reports," Wayne said. "You can do research from past resolutions and ordinances."

The system's archive of minutes goes "back to the beginning of time," as even handwritten minutes from the 1890s and early 1900s have been scanned in, Wayne said.

And while the online archive of staff reports and backup material only dates to about five years, the clerk's office is working to scan in older documents, though the process is tedious and costly, Wayne said.

Pointing to Dana Point as an example ---- that city has a similar archive posted online at www.danapoint.org ---- Mackin said she wants Oceanside's intranet to be made available to all residents through the city's Web site.

The activist-turned-councilwoman said she has been granted a whole new level of access to information since her landslide victory in the city's June 7 election, and said everyone in this city of 175,000 ought to have those same privileges.

"You have no idea what it's like to ask for something and have it show up," Mackin said. "Information. It's available, and you get it without pulling teeth and going to the city clerk and basically begging."

The city clerk said she's "absolutely" amenable to making the city's internal system available to all, as it would improve the public's access to information and decrease the workload of her office. But Wayne cautioned that she wouldn't want to needlessly post virtual mountains of documents that few cared about.

"Let's not clutter up the Web page with something that very few people would be interested in looking at," she said.

Contact staff writer Ben Frumin at (760) 901-4067 or bfrumin@nctimes.com.

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