Q: We invited city council candidates to our newspaper offices for an editorial endorsement forum. There are three incumbents and one challenger for three seats. We will have me, the editor, and a reporter there to ask the candidates questions about why we should endorse their candidacy. Because there are three candidates currently on the same five-member council, does that constitute a meeting that should be publicly noticed? We are planning on writing a story about the forum to appear soon after the forum and use it for a later editorial endorsement.
A: You pose an interesting question. Editorial endorsement forums are so common among newspapers you would think this question would have come up before, but I don’t think it has — probably because they usually involve less than a quorum of a legislative body.
In Government Code section 54952.2(c), the Brown Act contains a limited number of exceptions in which a quorum may gather without qualifying as a “meeting” that must be publicly noticed. But none of the exemptions quite fit your forum. Here they are:
(1) Individual contacts or conversations between a member of the legislative body and another person;
(2) Attendance of a majority of the board at a conference or similar gathering “open to the public” that involves a discussion of issues of general interest to the public or to public agencies of the type faced by that body;
(3) Attendance of a majority of the members at an open and publicized meeting organized to address a topic of local community concern by someone other than the local agency (provided the members do not discuss among themselves, other than as a part of the program, specific business within their agency’s jurisdiction);
(4) Attendance of a majority of the members at an open and noticed meeting of another body (provided again the members do not discuss among themselves, other than as a part of the program, specific business within their agency’s jurisdiction);
(5) Attendance of a majority of the members at a purely social or ceremonial occasion (provided the members do not discuss among themselves at all specific business within their agency’s jurisdiction);
(6) Attendance of a majority of the members at an open and noticed meeting of a standing committee of that body (provided they are only their to observe).
To be certain the forum is in compliance with the Brown Act, then, it appears that under 2 or 3 it would be best to publicize the forum in advance and hold it in a place where members of the public could also attend — or hold two forums so you do not have attendance of a majority of the board at either one.