More than 300 signatures have been added to Californians Aware’s petition launched last Thursday urging the state Assembly to allow voters to stop suspensions of Brown Act rules for budgetary reasons. SCA 7 by Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) would place on the next statewide ballot for voter approval an addition to the state constitution of the suspended requirements—posting of meaningful meeting agendas and disclosure of closed session actions, guaranteeing they could be no longer switched off to save money.
But SCA 7 has been sidelined in its final committee—Assembly Appropriations—since last summer, and it will die there unless acted on in the next month or so. CalAware’s onlne petition urges Assembly Speaker John Perez to order the bill voted out of committee and sent to the Assembly floor for final passage.
In updates on the petition page, CalAware:
- explains how local agencies could seriously exploit the mandate suspension despite continuing to post agendas (as many have publicly pledged to do),
- urges the public to report such “Brown Act Backsliders,” and
- shows how to find out which local agencies are contributing to the budgetary overload by submitting high cost claims for posting agendas and complying with other Brown Act mandates.
