CommentsTHE CITY--Recently, CityWatch published comments from Eric and Joshua Preven who argued that the City Council shouldn’t be holding so many secret, closed-door meetings. They’re right.
To take the discussion to the next level I am proposing 27 specific actions that City Hall could take, and neighborhood councils could push, to make City Hall more transparent, and improve the public’s perception of government.
Any one of the suggestions could become a crusade led by a neighborhood council. After all, they were created with the hope that they would organize themselves into a force that could, among other things, fundamentally change the way government operates.
To date, the results have been dismal.
Do the math. There are nearly 2,000 neighborhood council board members. Add in former board members, activists who have specific interest areas, members of each council, and all their friends and relatives. The number is staggering. It’s easily enough people to determine how this city is run.
In between neighborhood battles over planning and zoning issues, it seems reasonable to expect that a citywide reform effort or two could be included in order to reduce some of the reasons for all the neighborhood battles.
Improving City Hall’s transparency isn’t just a matter of reducing the number of closed sessions. There are procedures used by the City Council, its committees, and city commissions that reduce transparency in open meetings too.
I’ve written enough CityWatch columns to know what will happen next. Someone will write a comment taking exception to one of the suggestions on the list. If you read a recommendation you disagree with, ignore it, pick just one that you agree with, and organize the crusade.
The city of Riverside, in adopting transparency reforms for its City Council said it best: “Our values lie not in hiding embarrassment and unpleasant occurrences.”
The first step is to begin changing the culture at City Hall that discourages public participation. City Charter Section 900 explains that the purpose of the neighborhood council system is "To promote more citizen participation in government ...." That too should be the goal of the City Council, and they should be constantly reminded of it. Here's the list. (Mentions of the “City Council” generally also include its committees.)
1. If a City Council meeting is to be a closed session for reasons of discussing anticipated litigation, recordings of the meeting should be made public after two years if no litigation is filed, when the statute of limitations passes, or when the controversy is concluded.
2. After closed sessions, the City Council or commission should publicly announce which items were discussed that weren’t confidential.
3. If the city attorney’s representative in a closed meeting leaves after issuing warnings that a potential violation of the Brown Act has occurred, or is about to occur, the Office of the City Attorney should notify the public and media ASAP.
4. Every member’s vote on a final action in a closed session should be disclosed to the public at the end of the session.
5. Before the City Council votes on a settlement, the deal should be made public at least 10 calendar days before the meeting, or 15 days if it’s a collective bargaining agreement so that the public may weigh in.
6. City Council committees should be required to keep minutes and make them public.
7. City Council and commission minutes should include a brief summary of each person’s statement made during the public comment period for each item. Submitted written comments of up to 150 words should be included in the minutes.
8. Draft minutes of City Council and commission meetings should be available no later than 10 working days after the meeting.
9. All preliminary drafts and department memoranda should be declared public information.
10. Elected officials and agency heads should keep a public daily calendar of every meeting and event attended, minus personal events, including a brief statement of issues discussed.
11. The City Council and commissions should write their procedures and rules in a way that is easy to understand, much in the same way that city ballot measures are written in simplified language.
12. The Brown Act requires that, at a minimum, agendas must include a brief general description of each item. But the City Council and commissions shouldn’t to do the minimum just because it can. Often the descriptions of agenda items do little to explain to the public what is to be discussed. There have been too many examples in the past of items that were purposely worded to be so vague that nobody knew the importance of them, e.g. the Staples Center deal.
13. Rule 11 permits the presiding officer to determine the duration of speakers' comments based on the impending danger of losing a quorum. This misses the underlying problem of why a quorum is about to be lost. Legally, there is very little required of the City Council members. One would think that showing up and staying for work would be a minimum expectation.
14. City Council members arriving late to meetings should be required to explain publicly why they are late, or why it is necessary for them to leave early, especially if it causes a loss of a quorum, something that is insulting to the City Council and the public. All the explanations should be recorded in the minutes.
15. The City Council president should direct that the Channel 35 cameras in the Council Chamber be turned on at 10 a.m. so the public can see who arrives on time, and who is tardy.
16. The council minutes clerk should post on the internet the time of day at which each member arrived, distinguishing between those who have been previously excused and those who haven't, and publish the information.
17. Council Rule 17 permits the chairs of committees to waive consideration of an item pending in their committees. Instead, a majority of the committee members should be required to allow a committee to waive consideration of an item pending in a committee.
18. If it is anticipated by the Council President or committee chair that an item MAY appear on a future agenda, that item should be listed at the bottom of all preceding agendas. Often lobbyists and parties with a financial interest in an item will privately arrange to have an item scheduled for a specific date, usually when it's convenient for them. The problem is that the public never knows about it until the agenda is released 72 hours in advance for a regular meeting, or 24 hours for a special meeting. The future item can include a statement that the date is tentative and subject to change even after the agenda is released.
19. Council Rules 16, 23, 39, and 64 allow items to be considered by the City Council without being referred to a committee, or meeting the normal 72 hours posting requirement. The Council Rules should be amended to require that any such action include an explanation for the urgency, even if the reason is that it's a routine, non-controversial matter. Far too often there is no real urgency, and the public's ability to participate in the decision-making process is severely hampered by design.
20. Recommend that an explanatory statement of urgency be included whenever a "placeholder" item appears on a City Council agenda. This happens when the City Council committee plans to meet on an item after the City Council agenda has been posted. Often the committee meets just an hour before the City Council meeting is scheduled to begin, and the committee decision is literally run over to the Council Chamber. The public should know why it isn't possible for them to have at least a 72 hour notice of a committee's discussions and actions.
21. The City Council should tell the mayor that, except in the event of a real urgency, the Council will not schedule an item, or cast a final vote on any item until the staff report has been made available to the neighborhood councils and public X working days before the meeting. The mayor should give this same instruction to city commissions. Too often, critically important reports aren’t available until moments before a meeting is to start.
22. Council Rule 51 allows the City Council to send a matter immediately to the mayor for signature or veto without allowing time for the City Council to reconsider its action at its next meeting as provided by the Brown Act. "Forthwith" actions should include an explanation of the urgency. This would help alleviate concerns by skeptics that the action has been taken to purposely eliminate the public's ability to influence the mayor's actions.
23. Council members should be present in the chamber in order to cast a vote. Council Rule 48 provides that members’ votes be recorded as "yes" if they haven't used the electronic voting system switches at their desks. This is not the case when oral votes are taken, so it shouldn't be asking too much of council members to actually go to their desks and cast votes. There have been many “yes” votes cast while a member was in the bathroom, or snacking in the backroom.
24. From time-to-time, motions are referred to more than one committee either when the motion is submitted or afterwards, and each committee in turn will discuss the matter. But the city clerk should create a copy of the file so that each committee has one. In this way, any one of the committees may take an action and send it to the full City Council. This would eliminate the problem of one committee chair refusing to place the item on his/her committee's agenda.
25. Twice a year, the city clerk should post on its website a list of the files pending in each committee. These lists already exist in electronic form so there wouldn't be additional work for the office.
26. The mayor should assign one high-ranking staff members to be responsible for promoting transparency and public participation throughout city government.
27. The city controller should maintain a database on the internet that keeps track of how much each elected official receives in total financial compensation, where their discretionary funding has gone. Finding this out shouldn’t require a Public Records Act request.
If there is one person who take just one of these recommendations and lead a crusade to get it adopted, neighborhood councils will know the satisfaction of having the first step toward being the most influential political force over city government.
(Greg Nelson was instrumental in the creation of the Neighborhood Council System and served as General Manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
Los Angeles: 27 Ways to Make City Hall More Transparent
