Asked & Answered

Q: My City is planning to build a large in-patient psychiatric hospital less than 600 feet from a high school. So far there have been zero safety assessments and yet the City is trying to push it through. We figured this out via a PRA request and subsequently I’ve been making several PRAs – I received a response today and asked for access to the City’s calendars. Without providing any description as to why, they exempted

Q: I understand that the Brown Act requires that agendas  be made public 72 hours in advance of a meeting. Is that 72 business hours or could posting on a Friday morning (ahead of a Monday meeting) be sufficient notice? This notice would be posted at a California Public Charter School. A: As you seem to be aware, the Brown Act requires legislative bodies to post an agenda for all meetings “at least 72 hours before

Q: One of the school districts I cover is considering closing a school. At first the superintendent announced they were closing a school at a board meeting, but after a huge amount of public uproar he backpedaled and said there would be public hearings before a decision is made. The district has set up a fact-finding committee to look at things like declining enrollment numbers in the area, fiscal impact and the impact on academic

Q: I am service connected veteran openly criticizing government officials at the Veterans Administration. By exercising my rights under the constitution I was subjected to a pattern of retaliation from being denied educational benefits, denied requests for information about my vocational rehabilitation records, and denied due process under the 5th Amendment. What can I do? A: The First Amendment generally guards against “[o]fficial reprisal” because retaliation for exercising one’s right to protected speech “threatens to

Q: My recent request for public records was granted. However, the agency wants to charge me about $6000 to supply the records because of the staff time it will supposedly take to compile them all from the various warehouses in which the paper records are stored. And they want to charge for the time spent reacting the forms. They claim that they are authorized to do this because the Business and Professions Code gives them the power to charge