Left in the Dark: Nine City Panels Have Posted No Agendas or Meeting Minutes Online

La Mesa’s Historic Preservation Commission doesn’t preserve its own history—at least not on the city’s website.

Nearly 200 agendas of the La Mesa City Council—going back more than four years—are online here. So are the minutes of those meetings. But the city’s rich website is agenda-poor when it comes to appointed boards and commissions.

As La Mesa Patch marks Sunshine Week—a national recognition of freedom of information and efforts to promote the public’s right to know—we’ve taken a look at how well local public bodies promote openness.

The record is mixed.

Of 14 appointed panels in La Mesa, only five have agendas posted online—the Community Services Commission, the recently ended Independent Citizens' Bond Oversight Committee for Proposition D, the Planning Commission, the Traffic Commission and the Environmental Sustainability Commission—but the last two lack online minutes.

Nine La Mesa boards show no online agendas or minutes.

Besides the seven-member Historic Preservation Commission, panels with no posted meeting records are the Building Codes Review Board, the Commission on Aging, the Design Review Board, Human Relations Advisory Commission, La Mesa Community Parking Commission, Loan Committee for Real Estate Rehabilitation, Personnel Appeals Board and the Youth Advisory Commission.

Elsewhere, the Grossmont Healthcare District—which recently was forced to hold a closed meeting in public—posts board meeting minutes and agendas from late 2008 to the present.

Another La Mesa-based district—Helix Water District—has posted “board packages” back only to November 2010, with a note on the website advising: “For packages previous to those listed below, contact Board Secretary Donna Bartlett-May at 619-667-6232 or Donna.BartlettMay@helixwater.org.”

Minutes from past Helix Water District board meetings also go back only four months.

Local school boards have an uneven record on posting board agendas and minutes.

The Grossmont Union High School District agenda archive goes back several years and boasts 106 files, but many meetings are missing since 2006. The high school board’s 79 minutes go back to January 2006.

The La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, based on Date Avenue near City Hall, has an easier-to-navigate records site. Its website archives board minutes and agendas on a single page—going back to January 2005.

But the local champion of open board records may be the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District. Its website has a single page that archives  agendas and minutes dating to January 1999. But four meetings are missing online minutes—from June 8, 1999; Nov. 5, 2001; Nov. 7, 2001; and Nov. 21, 2005.

“The four meetings that weren’t online were all entirely closed-session meetings,” says Anne Krueger, a district spokeswoman. “I’m told that in the past they didn’t have minutes to those minutes, so that’s why they weren’t online.”

Even so, open-records advocate Californians Aware one month ago gave the college district a grade of B for freedom information in a December “compliance audit.”

The Ralph M. Brown Act says nothing about posting meeting agendas on the Internet, but that could change if Ray Lutz has his way.

Lutz, the La Mesa-born former congressional candidate, says he is resubmitting his resolution (attached) to Sacramento lawmakers that calls for several things, including:

The Democratic Party of the State of California hereby asserts that to more fully involve the public in governmental proceedings, complete agendas and meeting minutes, including full texts of resolutions, ordinances, acts, findings, and decisions, should be available on the publicly available web sites for all state and local bodies that also comply with the Ralph M. Brown Act.

Lutz, who serves as head of the watchdog group Citizens’ Oversight Projects, says the San Diego County Democratic Central Committee endorsed this proposal in June 2007.

At La Mesa Patch, we aim to engage our communities in conversation about the importance of the public’s right to know and educate them about local and state freedom of information and so-called sunshine laws and the public records that are available, how to get, use and decipher them, and explain how and why journalists utilize them to further our core mission of covering and informing our communities well.

First, a little background on Sunshine Week, launched in 2005 by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.  

Sunshine Week is a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include news media, civic groups, libraries, nonprofits, schools and others interested in the public’s right to know.  

The week, March 13-19, is funded primarily by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation of Miami, along with the ASNE Foundation. Games, proclamations and more are brought to you by the Sunshine Week team, which we have shared with you.

The following action plan is from Sunshineweek.org:

Start with a Sunshine Week Open Government Proclamation

In recognizing earlier Sunshine Weeks, many public officials around the country issued proclamations extolling openness in government. A few introduced significant open government legislation or signed executive orders. It’s time the pronouncements become actions and the few become the many.

This Sunshine Week, we urge citizens to press their public officials to do more, seeking not just broad statements of support for greater transparency but specific pledges and plans of action to enhance the public’s right to know.

Sunshine Week 2011 can be a time when you as a citizen or civic organization make a difference by identifying local or state open government shortcomings and then asking your public officials to pledge and initiate specific improvements in local or state law and practice.

To assist your efforts, the Sunshine Week team presents a sample Open Government Proclamation that you, or your group, can take to your public officials to seek a commitment on open government with specific action that will lead to increased openness.

Like all proclamations, it begins with a general statement of the benefits of open government at every level.

That is followed by a sampling of open government provisions that brought greater transparency to local and state governments around the country. We offer these as examples of the kind of specific action that may be needed in and appropriate for your community or state.  We also hope these examples will inspire ideas for other openness measures that may be needed in your community or state.

We hope you and/or your organization will find these useful in considering what sunshine commitments are needed in your government and in crafting a specific proclamation and action pledge to present to your public officials.

Let us know if you are successful by contacting the Sunshine Week team at dmk@asne.org and writing “Sunshine Week Proclamation” in the subject line. If your government’s action was reported by local media, send along the link(s). We plan an “Honor Roll” of government entities that adopt Sunshine Week open government pledges and/or take specific actions.

Here is the Sunshine Week Open Government Proclamation: sunshineweek.org/proclamation.aspx.

Play the ‘You’re a Ray of Sunshine’ Game

The Sunshine Week team designed this game to challenge you, help you have some fun and learn about why open government and freedom of information in the U.S. is to be cherished and held to high standards. Play it here: game.sunshineweek.org/

Get Smart About the Public’s Right to Know

Read up. There are resources for teachers, including lesson plans so young people can participate at hsj.org/Services/index.cfm?menu_id=9.

A host of resources on open government has been assembled by the Sunshine Week team at sunshineweek.org/ReadingRoom.aspx.

Story was updated at 11 a.m. March 14.