Can I access emailed public comments that are not read at meetings or summarized in the minutes?

Answer

As discussed generally on our website, the Brown Act governs each meeting of a “legislative body” of a “local agency” in California. Govt. Code §§ 54951, 54952. Such meetings must generally be open to the public, with opportunity for public comment during the meeting, based on an agenda made available to the public in advance, except to the extent the Brown Act specifically allows certain matters to be discussed in closed session.

At a meeting, a legislative body may choose to report written comments that it received before the meeting, but that is not clearly required by the Brown Act, nor does the Brown Act mandate any particular way in which such written comments must be reported.

The Brown Act does not necessarily require that a legislative body keep minutes of its meetings or control the contents of any such minutes, although one provision of the Act states that a legislative body “may, by ordinance or resolution, designate a clerk or other officer or employee of the local agency who shall then attend each closed session of the legislative body and keep and enter in a minute book a record of topics discussed and decisions made at the meeting.” Govt. Code § 54957.2(a).

Other statutes may apply to the minutes of specific bodies. For example, as one court noted,

Government Code section 36814 provides that a local council “shall cause the clerk to keep a correct record of its proceedings. At the request of a member, the city clerk shall enter the ayes and noes in the journal.” However this provision has been held “directory only,” “not conclusive as to the proceedings of a city council,” and not preclusive of “the introduction of evidence that the minutes do not reflect all of the proceedings of the council.” Moreover the statute does not purport to require that the terms of a resolution or order be set down in the minutes in haec verba, or with any stated degree of particularity.

Government Code section 40801 requires the city clerk to “keep an accurate record of the proceeding of the legislative body and the board of equalization in books bearing appropriate titles and devoted exclusively to such purposes, respectively.” However[,] the Attorney General has opined, we think correctly, that this statute “does not require a verbatim account. Minutes recording the substance of the proceedings is all that section 40801 requires.”

City of King City v. Community Bank of Central California, 131 Cal. App. 4th 913, 941-42 (2005) (citations and emphasis omitted); see also, e.g., Educ. Code § 35145(a) (“Minutes shall be taken” at all meetings of a school district’s governing board, “recording all actions taken by the governing board. The minutes are public records and shall be available to the public”).

We have not researched whether there is a statute addressing whether or to what extent a water district board must keep minutes of its meetings or what such minutes must contain. Agencies may provide for the keeping or contents of minutes in their own rules or regulations.

If you wish to seek copies of written comments submitted before a board meeting, you may request them under the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”), which generally requires state and local agencies to disclose any public record on request to any member of the public unless the record falls within a specific statutory exemption from disclosure. Govt. Code §§ 7922.525, 7922.530. General information about the CPRA, including a sample request form, is available on the public records handbook page of our website.