Q: Can the chairperson postpone a planning commission meeting with due cause? Or can postponement only happen with a vote at the meeting by a quorum?
A: The procedure for postponing a regularly scheduled meeting, such as a planning commission meeting, is not addressed in the Brown Act, which is California’s open meeting law.
The Brown Act was designed to ensure that “meetings” of “legislative bodies” are open and accessible to member of the public, and therefore requires legislative bodies to take measures such as posting an agenda ahead of the meeting, allowing public comment on issues that are within the legislative body’s subject matter jurisdiction, and only voting on items that are on the agenda. You can read more about the Brown Act on the FAC’s website
here.
Other procedural matters, such as which items are picked for a particular agenda, and how meetings are scheduled, are typically left up to the legislative bodies to decide. You therefore may want to review the planning commission’s rules or bylaws to see
what they say on these types of procedural issues.
Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP is general counsel for the First Amendment Coalition and responds to FAC hotline inquiries. In responding to these inquiries, we can give general information regarding open government and speech issues but cannot provide specific legal advice or representation. No attorney-client relationship has been formed by way of this response.