FRESNO, Calif. \u2014 The City of Fresno violated the Ralph M. Brown Act by holding budget committee meetings behind closed doors for years, without public notice or the opportunity for residents to attend or participate, a Fresno Superior Court judge ruled.<\/p>\n
Beginning in 2018, the Fresno City Council\u2019s budget committee negotiated the city\u2019s proposed annual budget behind closed doors in violation of the Brown Act<\/a>, the state\u2019s open meetings law that guarantees the public\u2019s right to attend and participate in meetings of local government bodies.<\/p>\n The First Amendment Coalition and ACLU Foundation of Northern California filed the lawsuit<\/a> in November 2023 after first sending a letter<\/a> demanding the city stop crafting its annual budget in secret. The City responded by insisting the budget committee was an \u201cad hoc committee,\u201d and therefore not subject to the Brown Act. This was despite the fact \u2014 as the Court noted \u2014 that the Council itself voted to make it a standing committee subject to open meeting laws in a January 2023 vote, as well as the undisputed track record of the committee operating as a standing committee before that time.<\/p>\n \u201cThis ruling makes clear that secret budget committee deliberations are not just bad policy \u2014 they are illegal,\u201d said FAC Legal Director David Loy. \u201cFresno residents deserve nothing short of full transparency on how their elected officials are spending taxpayer dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n The Fresno County Superior Court decision confirmed the Fresno City Council\u2019s Budget Committee is a standing committee subject to California\u2019s open meetings law, and that the City was in violation of the law when it failed to post agendas, open its meetings to the public, or prepare minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Fresno budget committee was making decisions on a record-breaking $1.87 billion budget without giving the public any opportunity to provide input \u2013 a flagrant violation of the Brown Act,\u201d said Angelica Salceda, director of the democracy, speech and technology project at the ACLU of Northern California. \u201cToday\u2019s ruling is a major victory for open government.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. \u2014 The City of Fresno violated the Ralph M. Brown Act by holding budget committee meetings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-301715","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\/301715","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=301715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}