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)