The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has affected nearly every aspect of our lives, most of it negatively, and one of the effects is that California officials are losing their voters. pulling away from
Local and state agencies, including Congress, after receiving permission from Gov. Gavin Newsom in one of his many pandemic-related executive orders to ignore parts of California's longstanding public meeting law. , moved the gathering from an in-person venue to an online one. Such as the Ralph M. Brown Act of 1953. Not only is this technology cumbersome and sometimes non-functional, it also assumes that everyone has access to computers and the Internet, which is not true.
California’s elected officials, however, appear to prefer physical distancing between themselves and the people they serve, making it easier for them to make public comments on the issues before them.
For this reason, many local governments have amended the Brown Act to restrict the ability to hold meetings remotely with little or no physical access to meetings. I support expanding legislation.
A key tool for that expansion, the 1944 Congressional Bill by San Jose Democrat Rep. Alex Lee passed Congress but stalled in Senate committees after heavy criticism from the media and civil rights groups. It seems that.
The First Amendment Coalition states, "This permits local businesses to conduct all public works without need or justification from unidentified or publicly accessible or private property within the state." will be able to do it," he said.
But a more limited version of institutionalizing electronic conferencing, Congressional Bill 2449 by Rep. Blanca Rubio of the West Covina Democratic Party, has also passed Congress and is about to reach the Senate.
Another pending Senate action, Senate Bill 2647, also seeks to amend the Brown Act to weaken the requirement for written, timely public disclosure of background material for local government meetings. The bill, introduced by San Rafael Democrat Rep. Mark Levine, was introduced to overturn a court ruling that it is illegal to post material on the Internet.
While local governments have been busy trying to get away from some of the provisions of the Brown Act, Congress has passed the Bagley Keane Open Conference Act of 1967 to extend the philosophy of the Brown Act to state agencies. We have somewhat insidiously relaxed the requirements for .
Rep. Bill Quark, Democrat Hayward, introduced Congressional Bill 1733 to authorize state agencies to hold meetings by teleconference, but the bill never passed the first committee. did. Instead, a revised version of Quirk's bill was incorporated into Senate Bill 189. This is his one of many budget trailer bills passed and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom late last month.
Not only was it questionable policy, but it was another example of trailer bills being misused to enact major policy changes that bypassed the normal legislative process, including public hearings.
These are the key questions. . Newsom and other Democratic politicians have been highly critical of the actions of red states like Florida and Texas, but it's clear they're doing little more than opening loopholes in the states' old-fashioned sunshine laws.
When the Bradley Keane Act was passed in 1967, it said: People don't give public officials the right to decide what people should know and what is wrong by delegating authority. People want to stay up to date so they can keep control of the tools they create. "
Amen.
Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.
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