Fresnoland<\/a> about the committee.<\/p>\n\u2018We Wanted to Settle This Out of Court\u2019: Loy<\/p>\n
David Loy, legal director for the coalition said that the city\u2019s use of a secretive subcommittee to make financial decisions year-after-year and its attempt to hide behind a technicality strikes against the core of California\u2019s transparency laws.<\/p>\n
And while Whalen acknowledged the city has been in compliance since 2024, Loy said the city could have avoided the lawsuit \u2014 including time and likely attorney\u2019s fees \u2014 by making a commitment to the coalition that it would no longer use the subcommittee.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the city had just done that, we would never have had to file this case. We would not have spent two-and-half years in court,\u201d Loy said. \u201cThe city would not have had to pay its lawyers and we would not be in a position to seek to recover our fees. We tried to get this settled out of court. We wanted to settle this out of court.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fresno Only Strong-Mayor City With Secret Budget Subcommittee<\/p>\n
Under Fresno\u2019s strong mayor system, it\u2019s the chief executive who creates the budget. Then councilmembers hone in on the details and work from there. Mayors meet with councilmembers individually or in small groups to discuss what the upcoming year\u2019s spending priorities should be.<\/p>\n
In 2018, then-councilmembers Esmeralda Soria, Luis Chavez, and Paul Caprioglio made the process more official by creating the subcommittee that for five years met without posting an agenda, taking public comment, or allowing outside attendance.<\/p>\n
The city justified that decision by saying the committee was an advisory committee whose mission changed regularly, despite it being approved yearly with the same purview. Whalen in his ruling rejected that argument.<\/p>\n
The subcommittee discussed multi-million dollar proposals such as how to spend COVID money. In 2024, the committee made more than 75 changes totaling $75 million, First Amendment Coalition lawyers argued.<\/p>\n
At one point in 2023, Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer said \u201ca lot of sausage was being made in the back room.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite a handful of California cities using the strong mayor system, including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and Oakland, Loy said Fresno is the only city he knows of that hid the decision-making process behind closed doors.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery one of them has standing city council committees and even though they\u2019re strong mayor cities; those standing committees, those city councils, are covered by the Brown Act,\u201d Loy said.<\/p>\n
After receiving a cease-and-desist letter in 2023, the city stopped using the subcommittee.<\/p>\n
City Should Be Fixing Potholes not Fighting \u2018Nonsense Lawsuits\u2019: Karbassi<\/p>\n
Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz said the city may appeal Whalen\u2019s ruling that for the five years the budget process violated state law.<\/p>\n
He and Fresno City Councilmember Mike Karbassi in a joint statement called the ruling a \u201cwin\u201d because Whalen did not force an injunction and did not issue any penalties.<\/p>\n
The court will determine attorney\u2019s fees at a future hearing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city of Fresno maintains one of the most transparent budget processes in the state of California,\u201d Janz said. \u201cIt is unfortunate that some chose to ignore the difference between strong-mayor forms of government and council-manager types of government thereby creating a false narrative of non-transparency and wrongdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karbassi said the city should focus on more pressing issues than dealing with lawsuits.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of fixing potholes and hiring more firefighters to keep Fresno\u2019s working families safe, the city has had to waste precious taxpayer dollars defending a nonsense lawsuit,\u201d Karbassi said. \u201cAll this because disinformation agents don\u2019t understand the fundamental difference between a strong mayor vs. council form of government.\u201d<\/p>\n
Loy disagreed with the city calling the ruling a win.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s no credit to stop doing something illegal when you get caught,\u201d Loy said. \u201cThat\u2019s the minimum the law expects.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A ruling Monday from a Fresno County Superior Court judge found the city of Fresno\u2019s budget process for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-301310","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\/301310","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=301310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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