HOME

Reprinted by permission. ©CFAC

BLACK HOLE AWARDS GIVEN FOR BLATANT DISREGARD OF FIRST AMENDMENT

 

Claremont, Inglewood and officials in San Bernardino County were cited Saturday by the California First Amendment Coalition for their "blatant disregard" for open government and First Amendment laws.

 

Each year, the coalition confers its Black Hole Award to government agencies or individuals whose actions stifle public participation in government and violate public records and public access laws.

 

"This year¹s Black Hole winners are truly losers to the extreme.  San Bernardino County has become a place where speaking your mind can land you in jail, and the cities of Inglewood and Claremont have aggressively attacked critics and steadfastly refused to release clearly public information to citizens and even to an elected Inglewood City Council member," said Kent Pollock, CFAC executive director.

 

The Black Hole Award gets its name from a heavenly body that not only emits no light but tends to swallow nearby sources of illumination.  The awards were announced Saturday at the Fifth Annual First Amendment Assembly held at California State University, Fullerton.San Bernardino County Supervisors, District Attorney Dennis Stout and Mayor Judith Valles were cited "For the county¹s extraordinary series of arrests, prosecutions and jail sentences targeting several citizens for exceeding speaking time limits and talking out of turn or Œoff-topic¹ at public meetings."

 

The Inglewood City Council was cited "For its extraordinary disregard for the informational needs of its residents, and for its aggressiveness in isolating one of its own members who tries to get financial and other accountability information to the public."

And Claremont received a Black Hole Award "For its campaign of intimidation, disinformation and unlawful secrecy, often in response to criticism of official policy, designed to reduce the public¹s knowledge of and involvement in their local government."

The actual awards will be presented to the agencies at upcoming council and supervisors¹ meetings by CFAC General Counsel Terry Francke.  Here are the details of each award:

 

SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY

For the county¹s extraordinary series of arrests, prosecutions and jail sentences targeting several citizens for exceeding speaking time limits and talking out of turn or "off-topic" at public meetings.

 

The most extreme case involves Jeff Wright, currently facing recommitment to jail after serving two confinements totaling most of a year for a series of assertive but nonviolent exchanges with public bodies in the county. District Attorney Dennis Stout¹s office, arguing that Wright was released too early last month, began recommitment proceedings after the homeless man told the board of supervisors that one of its members, up for re-election next month, should be in jail himself. That supervisor has admitted accepting leisure trips paid for by a bond underwriting firm that landed lucrative work from the county in recent years, but has settled a civil action brought against him by paying $7,500 to the county.

The nearly two year jail sentence the district attorney says is Wright¹s debt to society also contrasts with the year and a day to which another county official‹the former investment officer‹was recently sentenced in federal court for conspiring to accept bribes in return for contracting favors. 

 

Wright¹s most recent time in jail was ordered after he was found to have violated probation for earlier convictions concerning speech at public meetings. His "last straw" offense consisted in questioning San Bernardino Mayor Judith Valles about how limits on citizens¹ speaking time were being applied.  At the meeting in question he had intended to speak for three minutes on each of three items on the city council¹s agenda, but was told after three minutes that his time was up because action on the three items had been combined under a single motion.  He questioned the mayor for clarification of this ruling, she adjourned the meeting and explained it to him, and the matter ended there‹except that weeks later he was taken back to court and found guilty of violating terms of his probation and ordered to jail.  When he protested the sentence‹"This is a ripoff of the taxpayers!"‹Superior Court Judge John Wade summarily added five days to his sentence.

 

Wright¹s string of offenses leading to his officially estimated cumulative sentence of almost two years includes one at a supervisors¹ meeting at which the agenda included a proposal to charge a fee for commercial filming or videotaping in the county. Wright asked if the fee would apply to a rock music group¹s videotaping of its own concert, and his comment was ruled out of order. Another incident supporting his jail time was a case of mistaken identity in which he was seized by four deputies in the county administration building after another man was reported to have uttered a threat.  Wright spent 17 days in confinement awaiting his trial and conviction, not on the threat allegation, but on a charge of interfering with a peace officer. 

 

Earlier this year the city of San Bernardino attempted to get a permanent injunction keeping Wright away from Mayor Valles by distances that would have made it hazardous for him to navigate city hall. The permanent order was denied after the mayor admitted that its basis had been an isolated incident and did not cause her to fear him. That incident‹Wright¹s angry confrontation with the mayor‹had occurred when he learned that after ordering him removed from a meeting she had told a newspaper that he liked to be thrown in jail and wanted to be a martyr.

 

Bob Nelson, another gadfly, is facing a reduced jail sentence for refusing to leave the speaker¹s podium at a supervisor¹s meeting, in protest over his perception that the citizen comment limitations were being unfairly and arbitrarily applied. An attempt to jail him for a full year was abandoned after the appellate panel of the superior court ruled that he had not, as charged by the district attorney, resisted arrest, but had exited the meeting quietly when taken into custody. His ongoing complaint is the supervisors¹ propensity to pack the consent agenda with scores of items‹some of them quite controversial‹and yet allow citizens only three minutes to comment on them all.

 

Also this summer, activist Shirley Goodwin was removed from a supervisors¹ meeting and arrested after making three one-sentence comments from the audience, each challenging how limits on speakers¹ time and topic restrictions had been imposed on two other citizens and herself.              Board of Supervisors Chairman Jon Mikels, as well as county prosecutors, say the punished speakers have only themselves to blame, and there is no doubt that these citizens are extraordinarily adamant and occasionally abrasive in pressing their issues before elected bodies.  But we are aware of no other county where a citizen¹s insistence on getting official attention risks a greater loss of liberty than a public official¹s readiness to accept contractors¹ favors.

 

INGLEWOOD CITY COUNCIL

 

For its extraordinary disregard for the informational needs of its residents, and for its aggressiveness in isolating one of its own members who tries to get financial and other accountability information to the public.

Items:

 

o For the second year in a row, the council adopted the city¹s annual operating budget despite the fact that copies had not been available to the public through Public Records act requests.  Copies of the budget adopted August 29, in fact, were still not available as of the first week in October.  A single copy was obtained by a citizen who happened to be present at the moment the printer delivered the 17 budget packages to city hall on the Friday before the August 29 meeting.  On that day one copy was placed in the city library and another in the clerk¹s office‹closed for the weekend.  The 600-page, $212 million budget was adopted at the meeting after a seven-minute presentation by the city administrator, with no council discussion, despite a statement on the agenda that the council had "reviewed, revised, modified and amended it." A budget workshop 12 days earlier had provided various summary reports by department heads, but no detailed documents on proposed expenditures or revenue sources.  The city administrator refused to post a notice of this session as a special city council meeting, despite pointedly inviting all members of the council to attend and participate.

 

o  In August of this year the mayor pulled an item from the agenda during a meeting and, as each of 10 citizens in succession sought to comment on the item anyway, the mayor had the speaker removed from the podium by a uniformed police officer.

 

o  In July of this year the council held a closed session on real estate negotiations for the sale of a parcel of municipal property to the city redevelopment agency, whose directors are the city council members themselves.  When action was reported, the mayor, city administrator and city attorney would not allow a particular council member to inform the public as to the price, source of funding or any other aspect of the deal. The city attorney warned that any disclosures might jeopardize the negotiations or affect the price the city might obtain.  He and the mayor warned that such disclosures would violate the council member¹s fiduciary

duty to the city.

 

o  That same council member has had to make formal Public Records Act requests in order to provide the public with background documentation for items on which warrants are proposed for payment‹requests which, if honored at all, tend to produce the information days or weeks after the warrants have been acted on.

 

o  In July of this year the council took into closed session (and classified a supporting memo as privileged and confidential) a proposal to contract with a certain attorney as a temporary hearing officer to process a backlog of employee grievances.

Nothing in the memo or the discussion involved identifying employees, their grievances or any specifics of possible city liability; it was simply a consideration of the qualifications of the attorney and the fee to be paid him. The city¹s legal position is that approval of funds to be paid for outside legal services need never be discussed or disclosed publicly because doing so would arm the adversary with strategic litigation information.

 

o  In June of this year the council member, at a public meeting at which employee pay raises were to be approved, asked for supporting information on how the raises would be financed.  The city administrator admitted that he had privately briefed all other council members on this subject, but did not provide her with the same information because "she has not made herself available to me to talk to."  The council member had in fact repeatedly asked for this information, but to no avail.

 

o  Employees assigned to assist council members have been forbidden to send or copy e-mails to any city department heads or staff other than the

city administrator if they come from this council member, and the finance

director and some other department heads have been instructed not to speak to her.

 

o  Last month the city attorney advised the council that no member should be permitted to use his or her "council initiatives" time to ask questions of the staff or make other statements if not proposing a specific council action, supported by a second.  This elimination of all spontaneous expression by a council member was justified by the Brown Act requirement that council discussions be preceded by notice on the agenda.  It ignores the Brown Act¹s specific allowance for members of a body to refer to matters not specifically referenced on the agenda: "on their own initiativeŠa member of a legislative body or its staff may ask a question for clarification, may make a brief announcement, or make a brief report on his or her own activities."

 

o  In August of 1999 a resolution was proposed directing the city

attorney to treat all council members equally with respect to providing

legal opinions and assistance.  The measure failed passage. Elected officials, most would say, have to be prepared to deal with the rough-and-tumble of politics and accept defeat with good grace when their views are found to be in the minority.  But democracy also presumes that all elected officers have access to the information they need to serve their constituents, and adequate opportunity to express their positions.  It is one thing to be on the losing end of a fair vote, and quite another to be stripped of the power to alert the public of matters the majority would prefer to keep in the dark.

 

CITY OF CLAREMONT

For its campaign of intimidation, disinformation and unlawful secrecy, often in response to criticism of official policy, designed to reduce the public¹s knowledge of and involvement in their local government.

 

Items:

o In November 1998 the Claremont Courier discovered that the city had secretly settled a federal civil rights lawsuit brought against it and members of its police department by a citizen who had been arrested for assault on a police officer. The lawsuit claimed false arrest, false imprisonment, perjury, excessive force, malicious prosecution, and conspiracy. In defending the secrecy, city officials including the city manager, city attorney, mayor and council members, made the following assertions:

 

     oo the federal magistrate who approved the settlement had formally ordered     that it                    remain confidential.

 

     oo the attorney representing the city had protested the federal magistrate¹s order that the settlement be sealed.

 

     oo The city had never issued a check to cover a portion of the settlement pay-out.

 

     oo city staff had never been involved in the conduct of the lawsuit.

 

     oo the city council had never discussed the lawsuit in closed session.

 

     oo the city had never seen a copy of the settlement agreement.

 

     oo disclosure of the settlement agreement was not subject to the requirements of the California Public Records Act.

 

     oo the city had always been in favor of releasing the settlement agreement to the public.

Later, all of these statements were proved to be false, and were repudiated by the federal magistrate who heard the case and by the California Joint Powers Insurance Authority (CalJPA) who had defended the city. After the Los Angeles Superior Court issued a writ of mandate ordering the settlement to be released pursuant to the Public Records Act, and CalJPA had complied, that agency also revealed that it was the city which had insisted on confidentiality of the settlement terms and that the federal magistrate had told the city that if the case went to trial he did not believe that a jury would look favorably on some of the actions of the police officers. An ultimately released audio-tape of the federal court settlement hearing revealed that no formal order had ever been issued prohibiting the city from releasing the settlement terms to the public as the Public Records Act requires. Nonetheless, the city issued another press release again insisting that the federal magistrate had indeed issued a court order sealing the settlement and that the city had acted correctly in refusing to reveal the settlement terms to the public.

 

o In January 1999, the city manager presented for council adoption "Procedures for Conducting Public Meetings." The proposal created the position of "Sergeant-at-Arms," to be filled by a Claremont police officer attending meetings of Claremont¹s legislative bodies, who would carry out lawful orders and instructions given by the chair to maintain order and decorum. The proposal demanded that all persons in the audience remain seated, and required that those wishing to videotape a meeting must first notify and receive the approval of the city manager. But the most controversial section of the proposal (and possibly the most intimidating to some) allowed any member of any Claremont legislative body or any member of the city staff to have a mental health professional summoned to evaluate the level of threat posed by individuals attending any city meeting.

 

o In January 1999, a young black man was shot and killed by police during a routine traffic stop. At first the police officers claimed they had returned fire after the young man had fired upon them. However, later analysis of the weapon found at the scene revealed it had not been fired and its last traceable owner was the former police chief of a neighboring city, since deceased. After the man¹s uncle (along with hundreds of Claremont residents) exercised his First Amendment rights by demanding an independent investigation of the shooting, the city manager ultimately responded by releasing to the public a record of the uncle¹s youthful criminal conviction in order to discredit him, justifying this move by saying he owed it to the community to let them know who they were hearing from. Disclosure of an individual¹s criminal history information is forbidden by law. Then the city manager give the two officers involved in the shooting Claremont¹s Employee of the Year Award, and $1000 each.

 

o In July 2000, the city enforced a policy whereby participants in the Claremont Independence Day Parade, as a condition of participation, were forced to give up a portion of their free speech rights‹namely, they had to agree not to hand out any fliers along the parade route. However, those participants were told, they could distribute any literature they wished if they would pay rent to the city for a booth in its Memorial Park.

 

o Over the past two years Claremont¹s government has concluded much of its business in standing council committees, consisting of two council members and some city staff. The committees meet mid-afternoon on weekdays, often in the city manager¹s office, and sometimes in closed session on items such as the possible purchase and/or condemnation of property for Claremont¹s redevelopment agency‹items these committees have no authority to take any action upon. But even when the committee meetings are technically not closed, until recently they were de facto secret. While the three local newspapers have standing requests for copies of the agendas for all the meetings of all of the city¹s legislative bodies, until a Brown Act challenge last July no newspaper had ever received any notice of any of these meetings.

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION, INCLUDING COPIES OF AGENCY RESPONSES TO BLACK HOLE AWARDS, CALL 974-8888.