Judge discredits suit; councilmen poised to appeal
DOWNTOWN LA — After being rebuffed by a judge last week, two elected leaders suing City Hall in an effort to put a curfew on City Council meetings are poised to launch a new effort in court.
Because meetings regularly run past midnight, when most people are home asleep, City Councilmen Bob Holbrook and Herb Katz claim members of the public are kept out of the public process. What’s more, they say making staffers stay up late has a bad impact on service at City Hall.
In a written ruling handed down last week, Los Angeles Superior Court David Yaffe said Holbrook and Katz had no grounds to sue the City Council on which they serve. What’s more, Judge Yaffe said the councilmen failed “to show that they bring their action solely in the public interest, without regard to their personal preferences regarding working hours.”
Katz and Holbrook are poised to appeal, as soon as Assistant City Attorney Joe Lawrence files the final paperwork with the court, something he said he’d do in the next few days. Meanwhile, the councilmen also are working with lawyer Rosario Perry to find residents willing to sign onto a class-action lawsuit. They reason that while Judge Yaffe barred them from suing the City Hall, there’s nothing to keep a normal citizen from doing so.
“I disagree with the judge,” said Katz, who has offered to meet more regularly in order to end meetings earlier. “It isn’t about the council. It’s about helping our people be able to give more input... It is not right.
“We should end our meetings long before we do.”
City Hall has the ability under Judge Yaffe’s ruling to seek reimbursement for legal fees, an amount Lawrence estimates to be about $10,000. With an appeal and second lawsuit pending, that amount is only expected to increase. Lawrence said the class-action suit likely will produce the same result.
The issue of late meetings was first raised in January of 2002 by Holbrook, who at the time was working as a pharmacist at the University of Southern California. He said he had difficulty functioning well at the meetings, as well as his job, because of how late they ran. He simply wasn’t getting enough sleep.
Threatened with a lawsuit, Mayor Richard Bloom raised the matter before the council, and members implemented a several measures in attempts to shorten meetings. They also agreed to be more economical in their comments.
While the extra measures appeared successful at first, the council quickly slipped back into its old, shabby ways, Perry said. The lawsuit claimed nearly half of recent City Council meetings went beyond midnight, with some packed agendas prompting meetings that lasted until after 2 a.m.
For critics of the lawsuit, the late meetings are a sign that the public process is alive and well. Attorneys for City Hall “The lawsuit is a frivolous lawsuit,” he said. “The basic issue becomes the Brown Act (which requires government actions to be open to the public), which does not create a curfew on public discussion.” have argued they are protecting residents’ rights to be heard by allowing the meetings to stretch late into the night. They also accused Holbrook and Katz of trying to stifle speech.
Bloom called the lawsuit a political stunt — Katz is running for reelection — and he accused the councilmen of not diligently pursuing a resolution with their colleagues on the City Council. He said the council regularly reviews its rules and members would be open to discuss ideas for improvement.
“It’s very hard to balance the need to move the meeting along with the need to have appropriate and adequate discussion,” said Bloom, adding more City Council meetings would likely translate into more long meetings. “I don’t believe that simply having more meetings is the solution, personally. All seven of us are people who like to talk and be heard — and we also want to talk with and hear from the community.
“The subject is a complicated one, and it’s one that we need to always discuss as colleagues, but the thing I don’t believe council members Katz and Holbrook have really kept in mind here... is that we all should have a common goal of doing the public business and doing it responsibly,” Bloom added.
“When the public sees two members of the council suing the council over issues like this, we all tend to lose credibility,” said Bloom. “Frankly, I think their credibility tends to suffer the most.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 24, 2004. Read the original PDF.