Agencies File Cost Claims for Agendas : Brown Act: Cities, school districts and the county seek a wide range of state reimbursements. Critics say vague rules encourage abuses.
City, county and school officials in Ventura County have asked the state for more than $65,000 to help them cover the cost of publicizing government meetings.
The agenda-posting claims stem from a 1986 state law that ordered local boards to prepare and post at least one agenda in a public place 72 hours before each regular meeting. The state agreed to reimburse local governments for the costs.
But government watchdogs say vague reimbursement rules have opened the door to exaggerated cost estimates from local agencies that are scrambling for any available state money. They say the claims sent to Sacramento this year have varied wildly and in some cases are significantly inflated.
In Ventura County, local agencies submitted a wide range of claims.
Simi Valley told the state that it spent about $2,500 to comply with the agenda-posting rule. But the city of Ventura said it shelled out more than $25,000 to do the same.
Finance officials in Port Hueneme and Moorpark decided the expense was so small that it wasn’t even worth filing a claim.
Some Ventura County activists are concerned about the disparity in estimated costs for obeying the state’s open-meeting law, called the Brown Act.
“Two thousand dollars a month to comply with the Brown Act?†a startled Jere Robings, executive director of the Ventura County Taxpayers Assn., said when he learned about the city of Ventura’s claim. “It’s hard to imagine where that cost would come from.â€
But Leslie Casner, Ventura’s accounting manager, countered: “I don’t think the claims are inflated because they are based on actual costs incurred. And we can substantiate those costs.â€
Ventura’s claim asks the state to pay a portion of the salaries and benefits of each employee who helped prepare, review, proofread and post the agendas for public meetings, ranging from the City Council to the Bicycle Technical Advisory Committee.
According to its claim, the city manager, the police chief, the fire chief, the city attorney and other department heads all had a hand in preparing the agendas.
Casner said the claim also seeks reimbursement for overhead costs at City Hall. “That’s the office supplies, telephones, building space, reproduction costs, maintenance, lights, gas--the whole nine yards,†she said.
By contrast, Simi Valley’s claim listed only a portion of the salary and benefits of two secretaries who prepare agendas.
In most cities, which operate on multimillion-dollar budgets, these Brown Act reimbursement bids are considered small change. They are generally handled by finance staff members without a public debate by elected leaders.
Yet statewide, preliminary Brown Act claims for fiscal 1991-92 alone total more than $3 million. The state also received back claims this year for $13.8 million in agenda expenses for 1987 through 1990.
Critics point out that most local governments prepared and posted agendas even before the government required them to do so.
Terry Francke, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, believes that many agencies are simply using the open-meeting law to siphon off more state dollars.
“Perhaps the most fundamental mischief here is the notion that the Legislature intended to underwrite all the ordinary costs of agenda preparation,†Francke said. “The state is obligated to pay for new burdens but is not required to (subsidize) office costs, which is exactly what is happening.
“It might be different if cities said that if not for this law, we wouldn’t do agendas at all, which isn’t true.â€
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Francke and other critics say the local grab for state dollars is undermining efforts to close loopholes in the Brown Act, which also was set up to prevent public officials from making decisions behind closed doors.
Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed a Brown Act reform bill in September, saying it would lead to more claims and a further drain on the state’s beleaguered treasury.
“I think we might have had it signed, if it had not been for these claims,†said Tom Newton, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., which backed the bill.
Supporters of Brown Act reform say local agencies must be more realistic in calculating their costs.
“How expensive can it be for a person to sit down and type out the agenda for a meeting and walk over to a bulletin board and post it?†asked Daniel Friedlander, chief of staff for state Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco), who introduced the recent Brown Act reform bill.
Friedlander referred to a recent California First Amendment Coalition study that found dramatic differences in the agenda preparation costs claimed by cities with similar populations.
The coalition--a journalists’ watchdog group--cited Concord and Thousand Oaks, each with just over 100,000 residents. Concord has asked for an $80,000 Brown Act reimbursement, while Thousand Oaks claimed its cost was $6,500.
“By no stretch of the imagination can you have such a wide diversity and contrast in the amount of claims,†Friedlander said. “The majority of local entities did not submit claims because the costs are so inconsequential.â€
But Allan Burdick, a Sacramento consultant whose firm is preparing Brown Act claims for Ventura, Thousand Oaks, Oxnard and other cities, disagreed.
He said the number of city meetings and the number of people who prepare and scrutinize an agenda can affect the amount of a reimbursement claim.
Burdick, a vice president of David M. Griffith and Associates, said he advises cities to list all costs associated with agenda preparation, include administrators’ salaries and utility expenses.
His firm has created a sideline of preparing claims for about 100 cities statewide. The company works for a set fee or on a contingency basis where it can keep 30% of whatever the state pays, up to a $7,000 cap.
Critics believe that a local agency should only seek reimbursement for costs it has incurred since the 1986 Brown Act amendment was enacted.
Jim Hanks, Port Hueneme’s finance director, said that is why he has never filed a Brown Act agenda claim. “We were performing what we were supposed to do even before†the law was passed, he said. “We couldn’t really identify where our costs had been increased.â€
But Burdick said, “It doesn’t matter what you were doing previously.â€
Before 1986, he said, many agencies used loose agendas that merely listed topics such as “staff reports†or “parks and recreation programs.†The new law requires cities to describe in detail the issues they plan to discuss. It prohibits them from acting on items that do not appear on the agenda.
Because the state has imposed these new requirements, it must pay the cost of carrying them out, Burdick argues. As a matter of fairness, even cities that previously prepared detailed agendas should be reimbursed, he said.
Simi Valley Assistant City Manager Mike Sedell said it is important to recoup money for new mandates imposed by the state, even though his city has filed nominal claims so far.
“If we’re not diligent and don’t watch for those actions that cost our budgets and our citizens money, and don’t say we need to be reimbursed for them, they’re going to do it again and again,†Sedell said.
The flood of reimbursement requests has created a dilemma for the state controller’s office. State lawmakers have allocated only $1 million for the 1991-92 claims that already surpass $3 million.
The total could climb higher. Oxnard, which did not submit an estimated claim last spring, can file a final claim before the deadline today and plans to do so, city officials said. Other agencies may follow suit.
In addition, a city’s final claim could exceed the estimate it turned in last spring. Ventura’s final claim will be about $35,000--$10,000 more than its estimate, Casner said.
Ed Fong, a spokesman for State Controller Gray Davis, said his department could ask the Legislature for more money for Brown Act expenses. Or it could pay pro-rated shares of the $1 million on hand. Under the latter plan, a city might receive 30 cents on the dollar, a move that could benefit cities that submitted the highest claims.
But Fong also said his department also is working on guidelines to identify which Brown Act expenses are entitled to reimbursement. He predicted that no claims will be paid until early 1993.
Open-Meeting Legal Expenses
Local governments have submitted widely different claims to cover the costs of preparing agendas for public meetings. The following are estimated expenses associated with complying with the Brown Act. Applicant: Fiscal 1991-92* Ventura: $25,063 Ventura County: $10,548 Camarillo: $6,500 Thousand Oaks: $6,500 Fillmore: $4,000 Ojai: $3,000 Simi Valley Unified School District: $2,654 Simi Valley: $2,568 Hueneme School District: $2,440 Santa Paula Union High School District: $1,338 Ojai Unified School District: $482 * Many local governments in Ventura County have not submitted estimated claims.
Source: California First Amendment Coalition
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