Supes Brown Act Problem Appears Resolved

For the past two weeks, we’ve been discussing a series of events where Board Chair Maureen Mulheren attempted to justify violations of the Brown Act, California’s Open Meeting Law.

I’ll provide the punch-line now: I believe the problem has been solved.

I’m not going to re-plow recent ground other than to point out that Mulheren argued that it was legal under the Brown Act to handle in closed session a proposed administrative combining of the Departments of Public Health and 
Behavioral Health & Recovery Services under the directorship of a proposed new position, Director Of Health Services,

She claimed that the issues were “personnel” matters that met Brown Act exceptions allowing the Board to meet in closed sessions that exclude the public.

In reality, the proposed action does not meet the Act’s “personnel exception” where an individual employee’s employment situation may be handled in a closed session “to consider the appointment, employment, evaluation of performance, discipline, or dismissal of a public employee or to hear complaints or charges brought against the employee by another person or employee.”

That’s it. Those are the sole conditions whereby a local agency may handle a so-called “personnel” issue in a closed session that excludes the public.

This issue is a proposed action that legally and historically has always been conducted in open session in front of the public. The most recent example is the controversial consolidation of the Treasurer-Tax Collector and the Auditor-Controller offices.

So Mulheren’s attempt to steer the handling of what is an unambiguously open session agenda item behind closed doors is and was illegal on its face.

It was at the May 7 Board of Supervisors meeting where Mulheren admitted on the record several times that the Board had met in closed session to discuss the issue.

A perturbed Ted Williams, District 5 Supervisor, told Mulheren, “My impression was it was temporary. I just want to see a plan (on the proposed consolidation) that would be coming as a concept of merging these [departments], but I have never seen a presentation of any such plan. What does it look like? I think the best approach is we make a plan, share it with the public, so the public has the right to comment, and then we vote. Doing it out of order where you make something permanent and then telling the public what we’re thinking about, is kind of too late for [the public] to comment and influence the process … You just don’t have your staff implement it and bring it to the Board to rubber stamp. … We must already have a plan if we’re this far along and it’s decided. Is it possible to bring it up and show the Board?”

Williams was a 100% on the mark with his comments.

Mulheren retorted: “Supervisor Williams, it’s (the plan) in your closed session items.”

Willilams: “I can’t talk about closed session. I don’t keep closed session items, and to date I’ve never seen a comprehensive plan. I’ve seen a concept.”

Fast-forwarding to last Tuesday’s Board meeting on May 21, the Supervisors took action to remedy or correct the Brown Act violation.

It began with Mulheren explaining and apologizing for her comportment at the May 7 meeting: “You know I was really caught off guard at the last meeting. This was a discussion and I got a little flabbergasted by the process … I attend a lot of meetings and sometimes I forget which meeting where I‘ve heard the review of the meetings and when they happened and what they were discussed. What was helpful for me also as I reflected that I personally toured Public Health and was working actively related to the VSO conversation [a reference to the abrupt forced relocation of the Veterans Service Organization], and so you know it was a challenging conversation, and so I learned a lot. And there was a friend that said, ‘You know there’s no playbook for this.’ And sometimes things come up we’re not prepared for, so I apologize for any misdirection that I may have given [at the May 7 meeting].”

So that is Mulheren’s explanation for this whole question of the proposed Public Health consolidation and the Brown Act issue. Mulheren did the right thing.

In any event, the Supervisors unanimous approval of Supervisor Dan Gjerde’s motion to place the Public Health proposal on the next meeting’s agenda (presumably June 4) should solve the prior-occurring open meeting laws violation.

I would also like to thank Supervisors Gjerde and Haschak for their assistance and support in solving this problem.

(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)