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OPINION PIECE - As a former State Senator and the Majority Leader of the California State Senate, I have taken great interest in a significant court case probing actions of the Los Angeles City Council’s powerful Planning and Land Use Management (“PLUM” as it is called) Committee. This Committee is at the center of power at Los Angeles City Hall because, at meetings of this Committee, the largest real estate development deals affecting the lives of Los Angelinos are considered and decided. These decisions occur often in the context of a community-based land use appeal of earlier decisions made by the City’s Planning Department. Decisions made in this Committee typically entail major financial transactions, creating political and monetary “juice” for the Councilmembers who are picked to “serve” on the Committee.
And where there is juice, tales can be told. It is not lost on me that this is the very Committee that former City Councilmember Jose Huizar chaired, prior to admitting in his sentencing documents that he traded his official votes on land use appeals for bribes. How did he commit these crimes? Huizar did this by getting his colleagues on the PLUM Committee first, and then the full City Council afterwards, to vote as he wished and messaged. Huizar’s influence was conveyed to the PLUM Committee meeting members in advance of their meetings by using his Council Deputies to communicate his position to other City Councilmembers. All of this was done outside of the public eye with no transparency or knowledge of the public, but – as we have learned from this lawsuit – a cynical pattern and practice that seems to be an open secret at City Hall. And this is a central issue at stake in the current litigation challenging these secret PLUM Committee meetings and the communication process that the City has been forced to admit exists.
I have read many of the City’s discovery responses in this litigation and realize that this case has pulled back a curtain of secrecy surrounding these “not open to the public” meetings that occur one week before each noticed public PLUM Committee meeting. According to the City’s discovery admissions, at this non-public meeting known internally as “the pre-PLUM meeting,” each item proposed to go on the next PLUM Committee meeting agenda is discussed among the Council Deputies that work for the PLUM Committee Chair (Marqueece Harris-Dawson), City Planners with items of business on the next meeting agenda, deputy City Attorneys, the PLUM Committee’s assigned City Clerk, and an employee of the Chief Legislative Analyst. I am informed by the Plaintiff organization, the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition, that sometimes over 50 City employees are invited to participate in this meeting. This pattern and practice happening in the City of Angels mocks the Brown Act which requires public notice, participation, and prohibits backroom “off the books” communications. Cynically, the only persons missing are the press and public.
The City and its attorneys state in discovery documents that the pre-PLUM meeting is innocuous because, supposedly, its purpose is merely to determine what items will be published later that week on the PLUM Committee meeting agenda. This is what is known as an “agenda setting meeting.” However, in many other cities, an agenda setting meeting is itself publicly noticed and members of the press and public may observe the process. Curiously, not in Los Angeles. Why not?
And the City’s version of this “agenda setting meeting” may be more than what its attorneys are letting on before Department 54 at the LA County Courthouse where the litigation is taking place. The City’s discovery answers include multiple eye-popping admissions like: “Admit that an attendee at a pre-PLUM meeting sometimes has stated the position of the Councilmember in whose district a project on the pre-PLUM Agenda lies.” Document 31, Request for Admission 19 Response. And also: “Deputies in the different Council Offices with Councilmembers who are members of the PLUM Committee who receive Briefing Notes often type information on the Briefing Notes which they deem necessary to brief their respective Councilmembers on various projects. The information added to Briefing Notes by Deputies . . . sometimes includes the position of the local Council District where a project is located.” Document No. 32, Interrogatory 19 Response.
These admissions of the City got my attention because in 2008 I joined forces with the California Newspaper Publisher’s Association and several California District Attorneys to author a good-government public access reform bill that clarified the serial meeting prohibition of the state’s Open Meeting Law, the Ralph M. Brown Act. In fact, it made the acts the City admitted to in its discovery, and quoted above, unlawful.
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with me in approving that legislation were current City elected officials Mayor Karen Bass, City Council President Paul Krekorian, City Councilmembers Kevin DeLeon, and Curren Price, and former City elected officials City Attorney Mike Feuer and City Councilmember Gil Cedillo.Hence, while serving in the Legislature in 2008 as Assemblymembers or Senators, they joined with me in voting to strengthen the Brown Act’s prohibited acts related to unlawful serial meetings outside of a public meeting. [Link to votes on SB 1732]
Their vote confirmed that their own, as well as the entire Legislature’s intent, that a single sharing of the comments or position of a member of the legislative body (including local city councils) violates the serial meeting prohibitions of the Brown Act. In 2008 they joined me in declaring illegal that which in 2024 their attorneys and staff just admitted they do “sometimes” at these secret pre-PLUM meetings and in briefing notes sent to City Councilmembers. The Crane Boulevard Plaintiff Group is trying to quantify how often is “sometimes” and, shamefully, the City’s attorneys (paid for by the public) have thrown themselves to block access to this critical evidence.
To fully understand the inconsistency of the City’s attorneys’ claims in court and the documented votes of the Mayor, Council President and several City Councilmembers, we need to look at the online documents of the State Legislature. SB 1732 in 2008 specifically rejected language from a Court of Appeal case known as Wolfe v. City of Fremont. [Link to bill as enacted] That court’s statement that a single meeting or communication outside a public meeting was not a violation of the serial meeting law would make it impossible for prosecutors and civil litigants to prove a majority of a decision-making body committed misconduct. [Link to Senate report discussing proof problem]
SB 1732, Section 1 declares:
“The Legislature hereby declares that it disapproves the court’s holding in Wolfe v. City of Fremont (2006) 144 Cal.App.4th 533, 545, fn. 6, to the extent that it construes the prohibition against serial meetings by a legislative body of a local agency, as contained in the Ralph M. Brown Act (Chapter 9 (commencing with Section 54950) of Part 1 of Division 2 of Title 5 of the Government Code, to require that a series of individual meetings by members of a body actually result in a collective concurrence to violate the prohibition rather than also including the process of developing a collective concurrence as a violation of the prohibition.”
Thus, this portion of the bill declared unlawful the precise argument the City’s attorneys are now asserting, and that they will likely try to put in front of a Superior Court Judge.
Furthermore, SB 1732 added a clarification to Government Code section 54952.2 that while public agency staffers may communicate with City Councilmembers outside a public meeting to answer questions or provide information about an upcoming meeting agenda item, such persons may not be conduits to communicate the “comments or position” of a City Councilmember to another City Councilmember. The reason for this kind of information sharing being unlawful is obvious: it is a predicate act that if it occurs multiple times, would lead to a majority of the Committee “discussing or reaching consensus” outside the public meeting – a classic illegal nonpublic serial meeting.
The current litigation I am wholeheartedly supporting as the author of SB 1732 alleges that City Council Deputies routinely transmit the comments or positions of other City Councilmembers to their own City Councilmember bosses in written email reports. The City’s attorneys are saying that the City will only produce evidence where the comments or positions of a majority of the PLUM Committee or full City Council is disclosed in a single email. Since no one talks that way, the City will likely produce no evidence at all for the Crane Boulevard group. This obstruction of evidence with make it impossible to prove the City Council has a pattern and practice of violating the Brown Act and constitutional principles that require decision makers to not make up their minds on land use appeals until they conduct a public hearing to listen to the evidence.
One wonders if the City Council is really in control of its litigation position or if it passively allows deputy City attorneys to make up the City’s litigation strategy unsupervised. The City’s attorneys say that if an email only conveys a single City Councilmember’s comments or position, that (according to them) is not a violation of the serial meeting law. Key leaders of the City, including Mayor Bass herself, the Council President Krekorian, and Councilmembers DeLeon and Price joined me in outlawing this very argument in 2008! The City’s attorneys are saying they are going to make this argument anyway and hope they can convince a judge at the County Courthouse that they can keep secret evidence of Council Deputies sharing the positions of other City Councilmembers.
If the attorneys are leading the show, then this is out-of-control conduct of the City’s attorneys: pushing an intellectually dishonest contention in the Courts of this state. Their “interpretation” of the law directly contradicts the corrective legislation some of their own bosses voted for in the Legislature! I cannot imagine that the elected City Attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto, who inherited a mess in the City Attorney’s Office, is even aware of what her underling attorneys are doing here, but it is time for some City Council and City Attorney oversight to self-correct.
Ponder the implications of what the City’s attorneys just told the Crane Boulevard group: we will only produce as evidence emails that disclose actions of the majority of the PLUM Committee or full City Council, but we will refuse to turn over as evidence emails where we see Council Deputies disclosing to their own Councilmember bosses comments or positions of just one other City Councilmember. Just the act of the City’s attorneys taking this position is an admission that there are emails showing Council Deputies committing unlawful predicate acts of a serial meeting. We almost do not need to see the actual emails because the City’s attorneys are, essentially, admitting that this evidence exists.
This City Attorney’s Office in the DWP Billing Scandal under former LA City Attorney Mike Feuer (who also voted for SB 1732 when he was in the Assembly) was sanctioned $2.5 million for what one Court of Appeals judge branded as some of the most egregious discovery abuses she had ever seen. In June of this year, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments whether this sanction can be imposed under inherent power of the trial courts. [Link to Daily Journal article on Supreme Court skeptical of City’s argument on sanctions.] What the City’s attorneys are doing right now in the Crane Boulevard case is evidence why the sanctions in the DWP Billing Scandal case should be enforced by the Supreme Court. We simply cannot have the City’s attorneys improperly withholding evidence of the existence of a PLUM Committee secret meeting and communication process that cries out for reform. It is not the proper role of government attorneys to carry out a cover up of evidence the City is required to turn over.
If the Superior Court in this case accepts the City’s argument that it can withhold from evidence (and the public) each discrete communication of a City Councilmember’s “comments or position” on an item within the City’s pre-PLUM process, the City will defeat the Legislature’s entire purpose of enacting SB 1732.
If Mayor Bass, Council President Krekorian, and Councilmembers DeLeon and Price are true to their 2008 votes to outlaw this argument, they ought to be calling the deputy City attorneys into a closed session of City Council to discuss the Crane Boulevard case, and stop wasting taxpayer funds and depriving the people of sunshine in government as required under California’s Brown Act, and offer honest ways to resolve it. To continue making an argument outlawed by SB 1732 demonstrates an astounding level of bad faith by the City’s attorneys, and that conduct should not be tolerated by anyone.
What You Can Do
- Elected City Officials: Please get your deputy City attorneys under control—they should be working in the public interest, not conducting a cover-up.
- Press: Consider submitting Public Records Act requests to the City for all emails and Google Chats where a Council Deputy discloses comments or positions of other City Councilmembers and consider drafting an opinion piece calling upon the City Council to reform the PLUM Committee or replace it with land use decision-making Neighborhood Councils as proposed in the 1998-99 Charter Reform process.
- Concerned Community Organizations or Individuals: Please share this article with your members and on social media, urging the people of Los Angeles to donate money to the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition No. 9 – Link to Fund me Page to help pay for the depositions and discovery of City employees needed to fully expose the pre-PLUM process of the City Council. This group of community activists has been attacked by the City’s attorneys in a war of attrition. When we fight back, we win.
(Senator Gloria Romero was the first woman Majority Leader in the California Senate. She served as State Senator from 2001 to 2010. Prior to that, Sen. Romero was a member of the California Assembly from 1998-2001, where she served as Majority Whip. Prior to the state legislature, she served on the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District from 1995-1998 and was also an Elected City Charter Reform Commissioner. Sen. Romero holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of California – Riverside, and is a Professor Emeritus at California State University, Los Angeles. She is the author of “Just Not That Likable: The Price All Women Pay for Gender Bias”. She can be reached on X at @gloriajromero.)
