The Los Altos City Council may have violated California’s open meeting laws when members declared June 7 Gay Pride Day by adding the item to the regular meeting agenda without prior notice, according to a civil rights watchdog group contacted by a Los Altos resident to review the city’s actions.
The council had substituted “Tolerance Day” for “Gay Pride Day” in a declaration to recognize the gay community when the item came up on the regular city agenda. Gay supporters up and down the Peninsula bombarded the council with angry e-mails when word about the decision made local headlines. At the following regular meeting two weeks later, the council decided to declare June 7 Gay Pride Day, calling the discussion an “emergency item.”
The Pacific Justice Institute alleged that the council broke the Brown Act, which governs meeting laws, when it added the pride issue to the agenda at the start of the regular meeting last April to address the presence of several speakers who came to protest the council’s earlier decision.
The Brown Act, intended to ensure the public’s right to attend the meetings of public agencies, requires a meeting agenda to be posted at least 72 hours in advance and forbids action on any item not on that agenda. Emergency items that could “severely impair public health, safety or both” may be added to the agenda at the last minute by a majority council vote. The gay pride issue does not fall under this provision, according to the institute.
“It is very likely that many citizens would have been interested in the Los Altos City Council’s discussing a controversial issue
like a city-sanctioned ‘gay pride’ celebration,” according to a letter from the institute. “This is precisely the type of situation that the Brown Act was passed to remedy. The Los Altos City Council has effectively ratified a city proclamation regarding a very controversial issue behind closed doors and hidden from appropriate public debate.”
Los Altos City Attorney Jolie Houston said the council did not violate the Brown Act. She said the law allows the council to add items that need immediate action and come to the council’s attention after the agenda is prepared as long as there is a unanimous vote.
E-mails from local high school students in the Gay-Straight Alliance that requested a gay pride day prompted the council to reconsider its previous decision. The council needed to change its vote prior to its next meeting, which would have occurred after June 7 – the day students requested be set aside for gay pride.
The council needed to decide that night, or not at all, Mayor John Moss said.
“The item came to the attention of the council after the agenda, and immediate action needed to be taken,” Houston said. “We are in substantive compliance.”
She said the item was not added as an emergency discussion. Councilmembers may have referred to the item as an “emergency,” she said, but it was not added to the agenda as such an item.
To clear any alleged violations, she directed the council to ratify its decision last week.
Councilman Ron Packard would not ratify the decision, saying he was not convinced that the council had not violated the Brown Act.
“In the future, we need to be very careful,” Packard said. “I don’t think we have a free hand, even if we have a (unanimous) vote to take action.”
Los Altos resident Pamela Bryant, who contacted the non-profit institute, told the council she still believed they violated the law.
“Your constituents trusted you to provide adequate notice, to abide by your rules,” Bryant said. “You broke your own agenda rules. … I maintain you violated the trust of the constitution and cost yourselves credibility. I think you owe the community an apology.”
