Editorial: Beware of coronavirus-inspired attempts to lock you out of L.A.'s public debate (via latimesopinion)
When the Los Angeles City Council began canceling its meetings, there was understandable anger and frustration. Social distancing rules adopted because of the novel coronavirus emergency kept the council from convening in person — and, therefore, kept it from adopting crucial measures to respond to the emergency.
That’s a strikingly lower level of public participation than was contemplated by the Ralph M. Brown Act, the 1953 legislation that properly recognizes that the public’s business is to be done in public, with ample opportunity for constituents to testify as decisions are being made.Gov.
But government will do that only if the public demands it. Many public officials are contemptuous of open-meeting laws. The Los Angeles City Council long had a practice of barring the public from weighing in at “special meetings,” such as Friday’s, convened on 24 hours’ notice instead of the usual 72.
One clever tactic has been to schedule performance reviews of department chiefs, which can legally be conducted in closed session, but to then use those occasions to discuss all manner of issues that concern those departments and that the law requires to be taken up in public.
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