The District Attorney of Amador County is investigating allegations that the county supervisors cancelled a meeting then held the meeting anyway, thus violating California’s open meeting law. db
Ledger Dispatch
July 23, 2010
By Matthew Hedger
The Amador County Board of Supervisors may have violated provisions of the Brown Act by holding
a meeting after mistakenly announcing, both publicly and on the county’s own website,that it had been
canceled.
A timeline of events shows a public hearing to hear an appeal of a planning department decision
by a local resident was scheduled for June 26. That hearing took place, and was continued to
July 6. A mix-up in the supervisors’ office apparently resulted in a mis-communication about that
meeting, although all of the supervisors, the person asking for the appeal to be overturned, Tom
Hunt, and a neighbor who opposed the action, Barbara Cobarruviaz, all traveled to the project
site on Fiddletown Road.
But neither the press, nor the public, had an opportunity to attend the meeting, because it had
previously been listed as canceled and had never been posted nor noticed.
District Attorney Todd Riebe confirmed to the Ledger Dispatch that a complaint had been filed
with his office.
“We’ve received a complaint which we are investigating,” said Riebe, who could not confirm a
complaint to the state attorney general’s office in Sacramento had also been made. Phone calls
to that office were not immediately returned.
“When an allegation involves the board, there’s some issues there,” Riebe said. “I’m going to
take a look at it, and if she (the complainant) wants a second opinion, she can have at it.”
Riebe said if action had been taken at the meeting, it would be an issue, but pointed out no action
had been taken.
“I’m looking at it. It’s under investigation. She’s going to be interviewed, and she can state what
her objections are,” Riebe said.
In the hours leading up to the 2 p.m. meeting on July 6, office staff discovered the error and
called County Counsel Martha Shaver for advice. Shaver indicated it would be OK for the “field
trip” to continue as long as no formal action was taken.
“She told them they could go out and visit the site, they just couldn’t take any action. They would
have to continue it to the next meeting,” explained Deputy Board Clerk Sheri Robinson. “They
decided to not take any action that day and continue the matter to the following meeting,
because it wasn’t properly noticed.”
Staff re-agendized the hearing for July 13, where the appeal was granted, overturning the
planning department decision on a 4-1 vote, with Board Chairman Brian Oneto casting the lone
no vote.
In an interview with the Ledger Dispatch, Oneto explained what happened.
“At an earlier meeting on June 22, we’d looked at that Tom Hunt appeal, and (District 4
Supervisor) Louis Boitano said, ‘Why don’t we have a field trip out there and take a look at it,'”
Oneto said. “So we set the date for the field trip for July 6, a special meeting to address it. The
lady who I think is unhappy, the decision did not go in her favor. The decision was 4-1. I voted
no, not to overturn it.
“But we showed up out there and we said, ‘There’s been a posting problem, so we cannot make
a decision on site,’ which was the original intent,” he added.
Oneto said the board wanted to balance the needs of the opposing parties, and tried to do the
right thing.
“We came in the morning of July 6 and said, ‘oh my gosh, this thing wasn’t posted out front,’ the
intent was to post it at the property also, not that you legally have to, but it wasn’t posted there
either,” Oneto continued. “So we talked to county counsel and explained the situation and said,
‘you know, everybody’s expecting us out there at 2 o’clock today. Shall we cancel this meeting
or not, when these people are waiting out there for us.’ And Martha said go ahead and have the
field trip, just do not make a decision.”
Oneto said he felt it was a technicality that didn’t affect the business at hand.
“We were kind of between a rock and a hard spot,” he said. “We told people we’ll show up, we’ll
be there, we’re going to have a meeting there. We couldn’t just not show up, so we thought we’ll
have a field trip, we’ll go out there, we’ll take a look at it, we’ll come back, we’ll post it on the next
regular agenda and try to come to a decision, which is what we did.”
Oneto said, although it was inadvertent, he agreed the decision to go ahead and hold an
improperly noticed meeting could be construed as a Brown Act violation. “It possibly could,” he
said.
Oneto said he was saddened at being taken to task over the issue.
“Basically, what’s really sad about it,” he said, “was that the board went the extra mile, to go out
and look at something onsite because there were some questions, and to get beat up, due to a
technicality, well, all the parties that had shown interest were there. We also informed them there
had been a glitch and it hadn’t been properly posted, so we were not taking action that day, but
we’d still like to take a look at it and we’ll take action at a future board meeting.”
Oneto said it could be a case of sour grapes.
“The lady who’s complaining, she was at all three meetings,” Oneto said. “We were straight up
and said, ‘Hey, there’s been a problem, we talked to county counsel and asked what is a good
course of action.’ We did not want to inconvenience people. I think it’s someone making a
mountain out of a molehill.”
Oneto assured the Ledger Dispatch that the error was innocent.
“Is it possible that we may have got caught in a posting mix-up? Yes, but we did the best we
could to try and straighten it out,” he said.
Copyright 2010 Ledger Dispatch