The Fresno County Superior Court judge challenged whether the lawsuit was actually moot \u2014 as argued by the City of Fresno\u2019s outside attorneys from Aleshire & Wynder, LLP<\/a>. Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz showed up to the Wednesday hearing, sitting next to the city\u2019s outside legal counsel.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whalen also challenged a request from the plaintiffs, the ACLU of Northern California and the First Amendment Coalition. One of their two motions seeks a ruling that would prevent Fresno city officials from continuing the same conduct that got them sued in the first place.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Brown Act says what it says and the city was in regular and repeated violation of the Brown Act for several years,\u201d said David Loy, an attorney with the First Amendment Coalition. \u201cThat\u2019s why we believe it\u2019s appropriate not only to issue a retrospective declaratory judgment that they violated the Act in the past, but to enjoin them from violating the Act in the exact same way in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n At one point, Whalen asked the plaintiffs what they were even asking for.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhy should the judicial branch step in,\u201d Whalen questioned, \u201cand say, \u2018Yeah, you can\u2019t form a budget committee in the future\u2019 \u2014 and yet, it may be appropriate for them to form a budget committee in the future under unique circumstances?\u201d<\/p>\n Loy said that kind of ruling would, in the future, prevent the Fresno City Council from forming a budget committee behind closed doors every year, while simultaneously also claiming an exemption in California\u2019s Brown Act meant only for temporary, ad hoc committees.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe think the record justifies a writ that prohibits the city from continuing to do the very same, unlawful things that it did for five years,\u201d Loy said in court, \u201cwhich is to continue operating a standing committee created by the city council with continuing subject matter jurisdiction over the budget in secret.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I guess, my point is that\u2019s what the Brown Act requires of them anyway,\u201d Whalen said. \u201cI\u2019m not so sure why the court would have to come up with that.\u201d<\/p>\n The core of the lawsuit focuses on how the Fresno City Council convened an annual budget committee in private for five years. It was tasked with negotiating Fresno\u2019s city budget with the mayor\u2019s administration from 2019 to 2023 \u2014 all behind closed doors.<\/p>\n Those findings were first revealed to the public in an August 2023 Fresnoland investigation<\/a>, which quoted several legal experts<\/a> who said under no circumstances should a city council committee be meeting privately on a regular basis for several years \u2014 especially about the city\u2019s budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n The investigation also found that out of California\u2019s 10 largest cities, Fresno was the only one to claim<\/a> its city council budget committee was exempt from state transparency laws.\u00a0<\/p>\n California\u2019s Brown Act<\/a> has been around for more than 70 years now, and it requires public agencies and local governments to meet in public. After Fresnoland\u2019s August 2023 investigation, the Fresno City Council disbanded its budget committee<\/a>, along with 10 other committees that met behind closed doors<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Three months later in November 2023, the ACLU of Northern California and the First Amendment Coalition filed their legal complaint against the City of Fresno<\/a>, alleging city officials violated California\u2019s Brown Act with its private budget committee process.<\/p>\n In the final minute of Wednesday\u2019s court hearing, Whalen said he\u2019d issue a written ruling within 90 days. Additionally, for the first time in the now two-year-old lawsuit, Whalen disclosed for the record that he worked with Janz at the District Attorney\u2019s Office and the two \u201chave interacted together socially.\u201d<\/p>\n Loy said he had no objections and trusts the court\u2019s impartiality.<\/p>\n After the court hearing, Janz told Fresnoland he had no comment. Loy said he\u2019s looking forward to seeing what the court decides.<\/p>\n \u201cI certainly hope that we prevail,\u201d Loy told Fresnoland. \u201cI think the people of Fresno deserve a fair, full and open budget process. And if the city council is going to have a standing budget committee, then that committee should be open to the public \u2014 no more and no less than what the Brown Act requires.\u201d<\/p>\n Government transparency lawsuit not moot<\/p>\n At the beginning of the hearing, Whalen asked the city\u2019s lawyers to explain some of their arguments in detail.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt appears as though the city of Fresno still believes that they would have the ability to establish a budget committee, presumably operated serially as they did in the past,\u201d Whalen said. \u201cAm I understanding that correctly?\u201d<\/p>\n Anthony Taylor, one of the city\u2019s outside lawyers, didn\u2019t entirely agree with Whalen\u2019s assessment, arguing that the Fresno City Council \u201ccan\u2019t have that right now,\u201d since it stopped convening annual ad hoc budget committees ever since it was sued over the practice in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s already been two years where there\u2019s not been any type of budget committee,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cSo what I\u2019m saying is, Your Honor, if a future council president formed a budget committee for a three month period, that by definition would be permissible.\u201d<\/p>\n Whalen pushed back slightly, noting the budget committee only went away after the City of Fresno was sent a cease and desist letter and was sued.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt sounds as though the City of Fresno is saying, \u2018Well, we probably ought to get this litigation handled first, and then once the litigation is completed, then we\u2019ll have a better understanding as to whether we can do what it was we were doing before.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the hearing featured Loy making his case to Whalen, since what was on the table at the Wednesday hearing were two motions from the plaintiffs in the civil case.<\/p>\n Whalen pushed on how an ad hoc budget committee could exist for several years if emergency conditions proved it was necessary.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI just wanted to let you know that maybe you and I have a bit of a disagreement on whether just one year for an ad hoc committee is sufficient,\u201d Whalen told Loy during the court hearing. \u201cAnd if there are such unusual circumstances as what happened during that COVID cycle, it could last for up to three years.\u201d<\/p>\n Loy said there\u2019s no indication the budget committee was formed annually due to any special or unusual factors, as referenced by Whalen in his comments.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing in the record to suggest that there was a multi-year fiscal emergency that would somehow justify deviating from what is the ordinary, regular and recurring budget process that every city must follow,\u201d Loy said. \u201cThe ad hoc exception has to be very narrowly contained, or it will swallow the rule, and that\u2019s what the City of Fresno is trying to do \u2014 is have the exception swallow the rule.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, Whalen confirmed the budget committee\u2019s annual meetings with the mayor\u2019s administration consisted of discussing the entire budget proposal, not just budget motions made by councilmembers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Whalen noted how it\u2019s a problem that only the limited members of the Fresno City Council\u2019s budget committee knew what was discussed in those closed door meetings. He also noted another problem: no agendas exist for the budget committee\u2019s closed door meetings, which, in theory, would\u2019ve informed the conversation taking place in court Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo those three council members, with the mayor and staff \u2014 were the discussions related to just those (city council budget) motions that were in the hopper, or was it to the overall budget?\u201d Whalen asked.<\/p>\n \u201cThey discussed both,\u201d Janz replied.<\/p>\n Alarms were raised, but nothing changed<\/p>\n After Fresnoland\u2019s investigation, as well as the lawsuit against the City of Fresno, the Fresno City Council stopped convening the private budget committee, a decision made while Councilmember Annalisa Perea was council president in 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n While the city stopped convening an annual private budget committee<\/a>, the city council didn\u2019t open it up to the public \u2014 instead opting to still keep the key budget negotiation process private. Starting in 2024, Mayor Jerry Dyer negotiated the budget individually with each councilmember<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last year, the city\u2019s internal emails were revealed in court documents<\/a>, which showed how former Fresno City Clerk Todd Stermer raised red flags about the city\u2019s budget process. Just two months before Fresnoland\u2019s August 2023 investigation, he told colleagues via email<\/a> that the city\u2019s budget committee should actually be meeting in public under the Brown Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nothing changed after Stermer raised the alarm internally.<\/p>\n A key claim made by the city\u2019s outside lawyers \u2014 from Aleshire & Wynder, LLP \u2014 is that the budget committee was an ad hoc committee exempt from the Brown Act since it dissolved every year after the passage of a budget \u2014 typically in late June \u2014 and then reformed the next year.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, emails revealed in the lawsuit appear to directly contradict that claim.<\/p>\n Between 2019 and 2023, the Fresno City Council convened private budget committee meetings throughout the year, not just during the summer budget process, according to at least 11 email threads revealed in court documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n Additionally, emails revealed in court documents showed the behind-the-scenes shock of high-ranking city employees<\/a> regarding the budget process. It also showed one councilmember\u2019s attempts<\/a> to use the budget committee for private conversations before having public ones about the city budget during the middle of a fiscal year.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overview: In a Wednesday court hearing, Fresno Superior Court Judge Robert Whalen challenged arguments from both sides in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-227062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_0478.jpg\")
Judge Robert Whalen listens to the plaintiff\u2019s arguments during a March 18, 2026, court hearing. He asked a long list of questions of the plaintiffs at the court hearing. Omar Rashad | Fresnoland<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_0468.jpg\")
Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz listens to arguments from the plaintiffs during a March 18, 2026, court hearing in a government transparency lawsuit against the City of Fresno. He sat next to Anthony Taylor, one of the city\u2019s contracted attorneys, during the court hearing. Omar Rashad | Fresnoland<\/p>\n