Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout20210330_LettertoLee_AB 339City of San Luis Obispo, Office of the City Council, 990 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, CA, 93401-3249, 805.781.7114, slocity.org March 30, 2021 The Honorable Alex Lee California State Assembly State Capitol Building, Room 2170 Sacramento, CA 95814 Fax: (916) 319-2125 RE: AB 339 State and Local Government: Open Meetings Notice of OPPOSITION (As Introduced) Dear Assembly Member Lee: The city of San Luis Obispo must respectfully oppose AB 339. AB 339 places significant unfunded mandates on local public agencies by requiring public agencies to provide both call-in and internet-based options, in addition to the already required in-person options. This mandate is designed to allow members of the public to attend and comment during any public meeting. The measure further requires extensive translation services in real-time, during public meetings, even where no request has been made, which additionally burdens local agencies with significant costs during a challenging fiscal climate. This coupled with the overwhelming practical challenges associated with implementing such a measure creates deep concern about the ability of resource constrained local agencies to effectively conduct the people’s business. The City of San Luis Obispo takes its obligations under the Brown Act very seriously. Transparency and opportunity for members of the public to participate in local government is foundational to democracy and a deeply engrained cultural tradition in our City. Much has changed since the enactment of the Brown Act, and technology has evolved to allow for even more civic engagement. While these triumphs are to be celebrated, the mandates in this bill would create more burdens on our already struggling city and may hinder local government deliberations and result in fragmentation and confusion around public participation, rather than increasing and removing barriers to participation. There are three primary concerns with AB 339. First, the mandate requires both call-in and internet-based options for attendance and public comment. While the city has strived to maintain a continuity of government and the provision of essential services during the pandemic, once the state of emergency is lifted and elected officials return to their meeting rooms, there will be immediate technological and staffing challenges. The expenses associated with new equipment, and the cost of connection to both a teleconferencing and internet-based service in addition to the ongoing staffing, records retention and production, and maintenance requirements of these new services will create significant financial impacts. Second, AB 339 fails to provide flexibility to local governments to manage their own affairs. For example, what happens if either the teleconferencing service or the internet- based option are not available, or servers go down during a meeting? If this bill becomes law, the city would be unable to conduct Brown Act compliant meetings. This indicates that conditions necessary to operate government meetings are regularly outside of city control. The city strongly believes that conditioning the operations of local government on the operability of third-party servers dangerously destabilizes the ability to meet fiscal, legal, and practical obligations to constituents, such as the expedited processing requirements now associated with many housing development applications. There are also downstream impacts of this legislation to advisory bodies, such as the advisory boards and planning commissions as well. For example, a planning commission would only be able to hold their meetings in the council chamber that was retrofitted to provide these new multimedia capabilities and could not hold its meetings out in the community without a transportable audio/visual studio and staff. Because the City has a robust advisory body structure to facilitate broad public participation at various city facilities in the city, these requirements would effectively prohibit the City from conducting the number of public meetings it customarily has because all advisory body meetings would need to be held at the single location in the city that can technologically accommodate the bill’s requirements. Third, the requirement to employ translators and provide live translation services presents yet another financial and operational burden that could be paralyzing to city operations. AB 339 places new translation requirements in the Brown Act, in addition to (?)the Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act, which governs local government translation services requirements. The sole intention of including those provisions in this bill appears to be avoiding state constitutional reimbursement requirements that do not apply to the Brown Act. Under current law, local government translation service requirements are governed by Government Code § 7290-7299.8, more commonly known as the Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act. The Act requires local public agencies to provide certain materials in multiple languages and requires agencies serving a substantial number of non-English- speaking people to employ a sufficient number of qualified bilingual persons in public contact positions or as interpreters to assist those requiring language assistance, to ensure provision of information and services in the language of the non-English speaking person. However, unlike the one size fits all approach to translation requirements in AB 339, the Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act properly recognizes the diversity of local agencies in size, scope, location, community composition, services offered, and financial resources available. Under this bill, local public agencies, regardless of size, financial resources, or the public’s desire for services, would be required to employ a translator for any language that is spoken by five percent or more of the agency’s jurisdiction for live translation services during a meeting. This raises the question of what happens when there are an inadequate number of available translators for every council, planning commission, or board meeting? There are thousands of public agencies in the state governed by the Brown Act and forcing them to schedule their meetings and workload around an unpredictable workforce, raises serious concerns about how local government is to continue the work that is expected, and in some cases legally required, of them. The additional requirement of the translation of written documents poses another significant challenge. Agenda materials are extensive and often technically complex. As such, they require specialized translation skills and a significant amount of time to complete accurately. Finally, we are aware of draft amendments to the measure that would exempt the state government and its agencies from these onerous requirements. If the merits of this bill are so beneficial that they require the most expansive mandates since the Brown Act’s inception on the operation of public meetings, it is deeply disturbing that the state may be exempted, while proclaiming to lead. The city of San Luis Obispo shares your commitment to access and transparency and recognizes how vital these values are to local democracy. However, AB 339 will create a burden on local governments, both financially and practically to provide the essential core services on which our residents rely, at a time when they are already struggling and in a manner that will ultimately be a disservice to the very populations this bill purports to serve. For these reasons, the city of San Luis Obispo must respectfully oppose AB 339. Sincerely, Heidi Harmon Mayor City of San Luis Obispo cc. San Luis Obispo City Council State Assembly Member Jordan Cunningham, Fax: (916) 319-2135 Dave Mullinax, League of California Cities, dmullinax@cacities.org Meg Desmond, League of California Cities, mdesmond@cacities.org League of California Cities (Via email: cityletters@cacities.org)