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Brown Act

California: Palo Alto board of education accused of violating open meeting law with confidential memos

donal brown May 18, 2012

The Palo Alto Weekly is asking the Palo Alto schools superintendent to stop sending secret weekly memos to school trustees. The newspaper claims that the memos exclude the public from the deliberative process thus violating California’s open meeting law, the Brown Act. The newspaper cited the state attorney general’s handbook on the Brown Act that warns against using confidential memos. -db From Palo Alto Weekly, May 15, 2012, by Palo Alto Weekly staff. Full story

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A&A: Parents not invited to meeting that resulted in removing their autistic student from public school

FAC May 15, 2012

Q: A group of parents circulated a petition to remove my autistic son from a public school. They submitted this petition to a Board of Education member. There were a series of email exchanges between the parents and Board member. At the parents’ email requests, the Board Member arranged a meeting with himself, the Superintendent, and a large group of parents in a forum at the school district’s office to discuss my son, and behaviors

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A&A: City gone wild with continual Brown Act and CPRA violations

FAC May 15, 2012

Q: At last night’s city council meeting one city councilperson was censored by having his microphone turned off in the middle of his public comments. He was talking about how the city has lost millions [like the city of Bell] and given away millions more as favors to certain council and city staff friends. Actions are being taken by the city manager to sue this same outspoken city councilman over his asking questions about contract

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A&A: Does the Brown Act address how long a board member can be absent from meetings?

FAC May 15, 2012

Q: One of our District Board members has been out of the district for several months.  She has been participating in Board meetings by telephone from Alabama where she is seeking medical attention, but she is not in the district to serve in any way other than these monthly meetings by telephone. How long can this go on and still qualify to be on the Board? A: The Brown Act, at Government Code section 54953(b),

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California: Orange County water district drops closed session on negotiations with desal company

donal brown May 15, 2012

Amid a dispute over whether negotiations over the price of water from a proposed desalination plant can be held in a closed session, the Municipal Water District of Orange County dropped the item from the agenda of their May 15 meeting. Opponents of the plant raised questions about whether water rights were real property held by the desal company so that negotiations over the rights were exempt from the open meeting requirement under the Brown

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