Video of Everything – except Public Meetings?

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Video of Everything – except Public Meetings?

by David Gurney

According to the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) "Initiative," just about the only thing that can't be videotaped are public meetings.

An article in today's Santa Rosa Press Democrat shows that we are now on view and taped at transit malls public bus stops. According to the article:

"The five cameras downtown are within a block and a half of each other. One is mounted on the southern side of a wooden structure near the corner of Fourth Street and Mendocino Avenue. Two more are located in the city's transit mall, where several cameras already operate. Signs in the mall have long told people “Warning: Transit Mall is under 24 hour video surveillance.”

The cameras will provide police with a live video feed and will also record activity, allowing police to either watch things unfold in real time or review recordings for evidence after an incident has occurred."

While in Santa Rosa on Oct. 27 for depositions, in our lawsuit for violations of Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Laws, I decided to have breakfast at Denny's. I struck up a conversation with the manager, who said it was his last day on the job after two years. He mentioned that his superiors had decided to install 15 security camera on the premises, including multiple cameras in the dining room area. So you now are on camera when you eat at Denny's!

Although we have become accustomed to being videotaped at banks, convenience stores, and now bus stops and transit malls, the MLPAI's private contractors - running public meetings - would like us to believe that public meetings are not to be recorded, and that the proceedings at these important meetings, where important public policy decisions are being made, are not to be on the record. We beg to differ.

I was repeatedly interrupted, harassed, accosted and finally arrested for trying to unobtrusively record the publicly noticed two-day meetings during MLPA "Initiative" process to create "marine protected areas" on the North Coast in the Spring of 2010. We are suing the privately-funded MLPAI, the Department of Fish and Game, and the Kearns & West facilitators - for blatant violations of the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act and the Brown Act.

Kearns and West facilitator Eric Poncelet and Executive Director Ken Wiseman are continuing to assert that these public meetings were not public meetings but instead "workshops," and so were not subject to the law. But the Brown Act immediately identifies and invalidates this cheap and illegal dodge - that has been used before - of attempting to call public meetings "workshops."

"The Brown Act, originally a 686 word statute that has grown substantially over the years, was enacted in response tomounting public concerns over informal, undisclosed meetings held by local elected officials. City councils, county boards, and other local government bodies were avoiding public scrutiny by holding secret "workshops" and "study sessions." The Brown Act solely applies to California city and county government agencies, boards, and councils. The comparable Bagley-Keane Act mandates open meetings for State government agencies."

from: the Brown Act

We will continue to hold the Marine Life Protection Act "Initiative" accountable, to make sure that these serious violations of Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Laws and the public's right to know do not occur again in the future.