Our view: Charges of Brown Act violations must be taken seriously

It's not every day that a city councilwoman announces she won't participate in certain council proceedings because the public's right to know is at risk. When it happens, anyone concerned about transparent and accountable government should take the accusations seriously.

At the Encinitas City Council meeting held Oct. 17, Councilwoman Teresa Barth declared she would no longer attend the council's closed sessions, which she believes skirt a state open meeting law.

The state law in question is the Ralph M. Brown Act. Enacted in 1953, its purpose is to ensure that the actions and deliberations of commissions, boards, councils and other public agencies are conducted openly.

To comply with this law, California cities must provide public notice of their regular city council meetings, and post an agenda of the subjects to be discussed at those meetings 72 hours in advance. Some agenda items, such as lawsuits or personnel matters, can be discussed in closed sessions, but cities must notify the public about these closed sessions 72 hours in advance -- the same as for regular meetings.

Emergency meetings can be called with as little as a one-hour notice.

Another classification of meetings under the act are special meetings. These meetings can be called with only 24-hours notice. It is Barth's contention that the city of Encinitas reclassifies what would normally be closed sessions as special meetings to get around the more extensive notification requirements for the former.

Barth doesn't attribute the practice to anything sinister, but she says she does believe that the council risks losing public trust by not adhering strictly to the rules. As far as she can tell, she says, there's nothing so special about the items discussed during the special meetings that exempt them from the 72-hour rule.

The legal counsel for Californians Aware, an advocacy group for open government she consulted on the matter, told us he believes the practice is a "serious Brown Act issue" that a court would probably find impermissible. He added, however, that he'd never heard the accusation made by anyone else. An official with another open government organization we spoke to thinks that special meetings can be abused, but otherwise they're fine. Barth's plaint may not withstand legal scrutiny, but it's always a serious charge when an elected official says that the body he or she sits on may be breaking the law.

However this matter is resolved, it certainly won't be the last time that someone charges a public agency in North County with a Brown Act violation. In Riverside County the district attorney has been holding a series of tutorials on the law for elected officials. Perhaps it's a good time for our own district attorney to consider doing the same.