TRANSPARENCY NOT TOP PRIORITY - It was so ho-hummed and matter-of-factly reported that few would sense its importance when reading it.
The district attorney's office found that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors had clearly - and rather flagrantly -- violated the state's open meetings law when it met with Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown in a secret, closed-door meeting last fall to iron out details for moving thousands of state prison inmates to county jails.
This disrespectful scoff at the legal requirements for transparency occurred in the most populous county in the nation's most populous state. And, as reported [link] in the largest newspaper in the western U.S., there was nothing to indicate even a scintilla of remorse, outrage or apology.
In fact, the district attorney's finding came across as so inconsequential -- both in the six-paragraph version that first appeared on the Los Angeles Times' website Jan. 30 and the longer version that appeared on the front of the print edition's second section the following day -- that it hardly amounted to an official wrist slap or finger wag.
The district attorney's reprimanding letter came four months after the September 26 meeting, with no official action contemplated.
"The district attorney's office did not recommend any punishment, saying similar meetings in the future seemed unlikely," both the short and longer news items read.
But instead of any such reassurance that the top county officials would obey the law in the future, their top legal advisor, County Counsel Andrea Sheridan Ordin, is quoted as saying, "reasonable people and even reasonable lawyers can disagree." That shamelessly defensive and unrepentant posturing was followed by some lame rationalizations about "a unique and potential threat" that may very well have been part of the supposed justification for the illegal secret meeting in the first place.
(The rest of Ken Bunting’s column here)
(Ken Bunting is executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC) at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He is a former reporter and top editor who worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Los Angeles Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, among other newspapers and blogs at huffingtonpost.com) Graphic credit: RonKayeLA.com
-cw
Tags: LA County Supervisors, Brown Act, Open Meeting Law, violating the law, violate open meeting law
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 10
Pub: Feb 3, 2012