After a superior court judge ruled that open meeting activist and newspaper interests overreached in suing the Tulare County Board of Supervisors, the supervisors stuck back with a countersuit seeking court costs. The supervisors had been conducting taxpayer financed lunch meetings without public participation. -db
The Porterville Reporter
September 7, 2010
By Jenna Chandler
The Tulare County Board of Supervisors wants to recoup $32,270 it says was “wasted” fighting a petition alleging its members violated California’s open-meeting laws.
The Board’s Deputy County Counsel Julia Langley said a motion was filed Friday to recover costs associated with attorney fees and of defending several petitions filed by government watchdog Richard P. McKee, the Visalia Times-Delta/Tulare Advance Register and the California Newspaper Publishers Association this spring.
“Without any supporting facts, the plaintiffs have wasted a significant amount of taxpayer dollars. It is only right for the County to recover those funds,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Steve Worthley said.
On Aug. 23, Tulare County Superior Court Judge Melinda Reed adopted a tentative ruling which the Board’s attorneys said would result in the dismissal of a lawsuit alleging the Brown Act violations when supervisors attended 46 lunches in 2009 — on the taxpayers’ dime — where a voting majority of the Board of Supervisors was present.
“The petitioners and their counsel knew or should have known that they had no basis for filing either of the petitions,” Langley said. “The actual costs incurred by the County during this lawsuit should be paid by the petitioners.”
Five days after Reed issued the tentative ruling, plaintiffs said they will ask the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Fresno to appeal.
According to County spokesman Jed Chernabaeff, Reed ruled: “Petitioners’ second amended petition is based on speculation and unreasonable inferences. Thus Petitioner fails to allege facts showing that any type of policy making discussions affecting the general public or having to do with the county’s governmental interest have taken place.”
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