Find Part I here and Part II here.

In an effort to better comply with the state’s laws on open meetings and public records, The City of Saratoga has adopted a new electronic communication policy for its council members and planning commission members. “We are in a constant state of discussion about the best way for the city to comply with its various obligations under the law, and the various interests and desires and demands of a community that communicates with the city via e-mail,” said city attorney Richard Taylor during a joint meeting between the council and commission.  Although current laws were “developed in the days of pen and paper,” they still apply to current forms of electronic communication, he added.

Council and commission members who were using their personal e-mail accounts to respond to questions and comments from citizens were given a new city e-mail account and were warned by Taylor to no longer use their personal e-mail accounts for city business. “If you were to use your personal account for city business, then when we get a public records request, we have to be sure to look through your personal accounts,” Taylor said. “If we get sued, we have to tell you to freeze and not delete anything in your personal or business accounts.”

The policy also forbids the council from using “e-communication” during meetings.

The group also discussed adding a text message to the top of all e-mail communications that would alert members and residents not to forward any communication from one council member to another.  E-mails communications that discuss policy issues among a majority of the council members can be defined as a “serial meeting,” which is illegal under the state’s open meeting law, the Ralph M. Brown Act.
Saratoga News, 9/1/09

SJMN County to Consider Sunshine Ordinance

Most of the jurisdictions are located in the greater Bay Area. They all grant quicker, cheaper and simpler access to public records than would otherwise be made available. The list includes San Francisco, Contra Costa and San Bernardino counties and the cities of San Jose, Milpitas, Oakland, Berkeley, Benicia, Vallejo and Riverside.

Terry Francke, a longtime open-government advocate and general counsel for the nonprofit Californians Aware, praised Cortese’s effort. But, he cautioned, the search for sunshine may take a long time. Berkeley’s recently crafted ordinance, for example, came after 10 years and 24 draft ordinances. And it now faces a challenge from a citizen-driven ballot initiative that seeks even greater access than what city officials approved.

“I’d like to see every county — and for that matter every city — have one. But this tends to be slow going because the advantages and the merits of having a sunshine ordinance are more readily apparent to residents than to the government agencies that are being asked to adopt them,” Francke said. “So it’s not like a good government fad that just spreads like wildfire” among elected officials.

You can help. Please give us your input at the first Encinitas Project citizens’ workshop to be held:

Citizens have already proposed a diverse set of candidate initiatives:

Open Government

Increased access to public information and decision making. Ensure accountability for open government law violations.

Competitive Management Practices

Require competition and oversight in contracting. Require competitive appointments to top city positions.

Pension Reform

End the practice of passing all the risks of pension debt to our children.

Upzoning (Increasing Development Rights to Allow Higher Building Density)

Ensure taxpayer subsidized developments benefit the public’s interest.

City Council Organization

Term-limits and rules for council appointments.

Low Income Housing

Increase access and oversight of mandated programs. Ensure taxpayers are not being cheated in related development schemes.

Current project participants span the political spectrum and have come together to achieve common goals. The objective of this first workshop is to identify and select which issues should be tackled first.

For more information or to suggest other issues and solutions to be considered email encinitasproject@gmail.com.

The multi-term members of the Encinitas Council bring a lot of experience to the table in establishing long-term financial risk in the form of pension liabilities and salary schedules.

Coming out of backroom negotiations in 2005:

Stocks, Houlihan, Guerin and Dalager approved a pay package that would give a staggering 35 percent raise to city workers in the form of a lavish, lifetime boost in their retirement incomes. For good measure, ordinary wages would rise 3.2 percent annually for three years. All this while state government wrestles with billions of dollars in projected deficits, a precarious condition that threatens the fiscal health of local governments.

One year later the city declared it was unable to pay for all its priority projects (library, Hall park, fire stations, & public works yard), and would take out $20 million in loans.

Food for thought: Only the Library and the public works yard have been completed to date. The Hall park phase I is still officially underfunded.

Coming out of backroom negotiations in 2008:

Barth, Stocks, Houlihan, and Bond approved a 15% pay raise over four years right as structural problems in the economy became more difficult to ignore. It had been conventional to approve 3 year contracts. The pay raise resulted in a proportional increase in pension liabilities.

Several citizens asked the council to rethink a four-year agreement because of the housing slump, unemployment and other economic uncertainties. It was too late, the decision had already been deliberated and endorsed behind closed doors.

At the time, “If I were in private business, I would not lock in the kind of increase you’re considering now,” said Gerald Sodomka of Cardiff.

Kevin Cummins suggested a shorter contract or a contract with a clause allowing the terms to be revisited if the economy didn’t hold up. The public comments were blown off. It was already a done deal.

Council Member Bond did point out that the city has a notable stabilization fund that can be tapped if revenues come in short due to a short economic recession. Regrettably, the council doesn’t seem to realize that avoiding a budget squeeze is not the only reason to have gone with a shorter contract.

It was unclear what the labor market was going to look like in 1, 2, 3 or 4 years, but there was good reason to think things were structurally unsound in the economy. The private sector was already pulling back on benefits, salary, and staffing and parts of the public sector would follow.

In hard times it is tougher for the unions to bargain for raises exceeding salary increases found in the private sector. The union probably knew this and they wisely “negotiated” a contract that will got their union members (and, in practice, management) through the rough spot unscathed. That is probably why there were audible, but restrained, cheers from staff when the council gave them 4 years of unconditional raises. It should be sobering to the taxpayer that staff actually cheered the council’s unanimous decision.

No one on the council applied business sense to that decision. The negotiation process did not result in a wise or fair process or result.

This week Jerome Stocks made a sturdy effort to make pension reform part of union contract negotiations.