Question
Where I live, the city council has the closed session portion of the meeting first. This leads the public to believe things on the agenda are being voted on and the decision is made on the item, before the public has the opportunity to comment on the item. Is this legal i.e. holding closed session first? If this is not legal, what California laws were violated?
Answer
The Brown Act — the California law that requires meetings of the legislative bodies of government agencies to hold their meetings in public — provides that before holding a closed session, the body must identify, in an open and public meeting, the items to be discussed in closed session. If the information required to be disclosed is contained on the posted agenda, the disclosure can take the form of a reference to the posted agenda. See Govt. Code Section 54956.7 – 54957. Otherwise, I am not aware of any provision of the Brown Act that would prohibit holding a closed session at the beginning of a meeting.
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