Council Members Battle Burning the Midnight Oil

By Mark McGuigan
Staff Writer

Oct 27 -- In an effort to curb chronic late night council meetings that reduce participants to the equivalent of a “dead man walking,” two council members expect to file a legal complaint this week against the City charging that such meetings are in violation of State law.

The complaint -- filed on behalf of Council members Bob Holbrook and Herb Katz -- hopes to rein in council meetings that regularly continue until the early hours of the morning, in effect prohibiting members of the public from addressing the council and exhausting City staff.

“Looking around the dais, sometimes I see council members asleep and I see staff asleep and I don’t think this is what we should be doing,” Holbrook said of the exhausting schedule.

“It doesn’t seem to matter what the good intentions are,” he said. “The meetings cannot be controlled and keep going on as late as two or three a.m.”

The complaint -- which is a precursor of a lawsuit -- was filed by the offices of Rosario Perry, a long-time critic of the council who normally represents landlords, in an attempt to “remedy violations of the Ralph Brown Act and Occupational Safety and Health Act,” according to the complaint.

"The problem is two-fold," Perry said. "There's people who like to come to council meetings to talk and just can't do it anymore. It's too late. The other problem is council people can't do their job, and City employees are being taken advantage of by being forced to stay there so late.

"It's got to stop," Perry said. "I don't know of another city council that meets beyond midnight."

The complaint claims that “because the City Council meetings often do not adjourn before 12:30 a.m. and as late as 3:00 a.m., most members of the public do not and cannot be expected to address the City Council under such unreasonable conditions. In effect, members of the public are not being afforded a reasonable opportunity to address the City Council.”

The Brown Act establishes the basic requirements for open meetings chaired by commissions, boards and councils and guarantees the public’s right to attend and participate in meetings of local legislative bodies.

But City officials argue that late night meetings are not a violation of the Brown Act.

"I am not aware of any specific provisions of the Brown Act that expressly require council meetings to end at a particular time," said City Attorney Marsha Moutrie.

The complaint contends that the public’s right to address the council is being severely hamstrung when meetings drag on into the wee hours and asks the judge to limit meetings to 11 p.m. and hold public comment items at the beginning of the sessions.

The complaint recommends that “the City Council rearrange their agenda item 14 (public comment) so that it is called first between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. to allow the public to attend and address the council.”

Presently, members of the public who attend council meetings in the hope of having their voices heard are becoming “disillusioned,” according to Holbrook. Most leave before they get a chance to speak. “I think that’s a shame,” he said.

The complaint has been on the horizon since early last year, when the council decided to hear a second staff report directly following a marathon six-hour hearing that had continued until 12:30 a.m.

The meeting did not finish until 3, and although he left after midnight, it proved the final straw for Holbrook, who said he often felt like "a dead man walking" after late meetings. He filed a complaint with the City Attorney's Office the following day, but claims no action was taken.

“The more I thought about it, sharing my thoughts with the City Manager and City Attorney hasn’t done anything,” Holbrook told The Lookout last year. “I’m hoping a court will intervene on behalf of the people.”

Late night meetings are nothing new to the Santa Monica City Council. A previous analysis of City Clerk records showed that 17 of the 29 meetings held in 2001 lasted at least until 1 a.m., with one ending at 3 and another at 3:30 a.m. Almost half of all meetings in 2002 ran past midnight.

The complaint lists the start and end times of all council meetings held between January and August of 2003; four of the 18 meetings lasted until after 1 a.m.

Eight of the remaining meetings ran until after midnight, and the last recorded meeting on August 12 ran from 5:55 p.m. until 2:55 a.m. -- the equivalent of a nine-hour workday.

“These unlawful actions by the City Council have caused and shall continue to cause irreparable harm to Plaintiffs and the public in general,” the complaint claims.

“There are some people on the dais who don’t go to bed until 3 a.m., so they’re okay,” said Holbrook, who drives to meetings from his job at USC. “Some members have a lot of things to say and lots and lots of questions.”

“I think my lifestyle is closer to the public’s lifestyle,” he said of his job, which requires he rise at the crack of dawn. “I don’t think the public has to conform their lifestyle to the City Council’s lifestyle.”

To further exacerbate the problem, when members of the public lobby on an agenda item, the result is often a deluge of residents venting on matters of even minor importance, according to Holbrook.

“People in Santa Monica know that the more people who show up at meetings, the better chances they have of getting their way,” said Holbrook. “It’s the culture of Santa Monica City Council meetings."