By Anne Caenn
Does the City Council take seriously its obligation to inform the community of its activities? Recent events at City Hall are not encouraging.
At the last City Council meeting, the Council attempted to cure Brown Act violations identified by Village Laguna by holding a public meeting on the Hotel Laguna’s renovation. But at the same time, the Council tried to minimize the violations by resorting to subterfuge.
Some councilmembers suggested that the vote allowing construction to resume at the hotel was actually a staff decision, and the Council’s vote was merely to “concur.” But no one can seriously argue that if the Council had voted not to support staff’s decision that staff would have ignored Council and allowed work to resume. The decision to allow work on the hotel to resume was an illegal closed-session vote by the Council.
The City Attorney and some councilmembers argued that the closed session was properly noticed under the Brown Act’s litigation exception because the City Attorney had formed the opinion that there was potential litigation involving Hotel Laguna, even though litigation was never discussed with the Council. These arguments, fly in the face of the plain wording of the Brown Act. The exception for anticipated litigation is triggered when “[a] point has been reached where, in the opinion of the legislative body of the local agency based on the advice of its legal counsel, based on existing facts and circumstances, there is a significant exposure to litigation against the local agency.” The litigation exception is only triggered if the City Attorney discusses litigation with the Council. That did not occur.
Furthermore, some councilmembers argued that the closed session was properly noticed because there were litigation threats against the City. But the city did not notice the closed session to discuss lawsuits against the city. The agenda stated that the closed session was for “consideration of whether to initiate litigation.” A discussion of lawsuits against the city was not proper under the city’s noticing.
Even if the city was only guilty of sloppy noticing, there is another problem. The Brown Act requires the City to identify specific “facts and circumstances” creating a litigation threat, which must be identified before the closed session. Neither the Coastal Commission proceeding nor the vague possibility of a community lawsuit meet the definition of “facts and circumstances.” Furthermore, for a threat like the one that the Honarkar family communicated to the City Manager, the Brown Act requires that a city official or employee must make a contemporaneous written record of the threat, which must be included in the agenda packet provided prior to the meeting. The City utterly failed to comply with any of these Brown Act requirements.
The proffered reasons for the closed session from some councilmembers are nothing more than an after-the-fact effort to avoid responsibility for their illegal actions. The Council was caught violating the Brown Act and continues to deny any illegal action or wrong-doing. We had hoped that the Council could move on and begin to address the important issues confronting the City, including a timely reopening of the Hotel Laguna. Instead, some councilmembers and their advisors doubled down on bogus explanations. They should know better. Their false explanations convey a profound lack of regard for the public’s right to be informed and to participate in important public decisions.
Village Laguna is committed to a fully informed and involved community. Certain members of the Council, however, must stop their assault on transparency and community involvement, and they must stop now or face repeated issues over Brown Act violations and alienation of the community.
Anne is president of Village Laguna, Inc.
