Title
Hearing on the Sunshine Ordinance Complaint Filed on October 30, 2018 and the November 14, 2018 Open Government Commission Hearing and Decision, Including Scope of Legal Authority of the Open Government Commission to Impose Certain Penalties under the Sunshine Ordinance and Potential Next Steps.
Body
PLEASE SEE ATTACHED REVISED 3-A. STAFF REPORT
To: Honorable Chair Members of the Open Government Commission
From: Michael H. Roush, Interim City Attorney
QUESTION(S)
Whether the Open Government Commission has the legal authority under Section 2-93.8 (Penalties), subsection (a), of the Alameda Municipal Code ("AMC") to order the City Council to renotice the first reading of an ordinance based on a finding that the agenda description violated the City's Sunshine Ordinance?
ANSWER(S)
No. The Open Government Commission ("Commission") does not have the authority to invalidate a final legislative act based on a finding that the agenda description for the first reading violates the City's Sunshine Ordinance by requiring a new first reading of an ordinance, given that the Council has already adopted such an ordinance at a duly noticed regular meeting. To hold otherwise would be inconsistent with the Charter and the organic local statute that created the Commission, in addition to constituting an improper delegation of the Council's authority to legislate locally.
At the outset, this Office recognizes that although this issue may have been avoided if the Commission had had the benefit of this memo at or prior to the hearing on the complaint. That, however, did not occur for various reasons including (a) prior to Ms. Chen's complaint, the Commission had not (to our knowledge) ever heard a complaint that called for the null and void remedy, (b) our Office did not believe (and continues not to believe) that a violation of the Sunshine Ordinance occurred at the Council's October 16 meeting, and (c) the issue demanded a thorough and thoughtful legal analysis whic...
Click here for full text