Seating Shortage Leads to Wal-Mart Hearing Redo

Posted by Terry Francke, General Counsel | Jan 13, 2009 | Legal Issue: Open Meetings | 0 |

OPEN MEETINGS — The Lodi News-Sentinel reports that, in response to an allegation of having violated the Brown Act, the Lodi City Council decided today to decertify the environmental impact report for a Wal-Mart Supercenter and reschedule a meeting to receive public comment on the report.

A private group, Citizens for Open Government, had filed a letter with the city on Jan. 6 stating that the group plans to sue because a Dec. 10 council meeting violated the state's public meetings law. The law the Ralph M. Brown Act dictates the rules of public meetings.
The council certified Wal-Mart's environmental report at the Dec. 10 meeting.
Citizens for Open Government argued that the city did not provide open access to the meeting because some of the 200 people who showed up had to wait outside for more than two hours for seats to open up inside the council's meeting place at Carnegie Forum.

About The Editor

Terry Francke, General Counsel

Terry Francke has a 39-year history of helping journalists, citizens and public officials understand and use their First Amendment and open government rights. With CalAware, Francke has authored comprehensive and authoritative guidebooks to California law on access to government meetings and public records and the news gathering and publication rights of journalists. Focusing on these issues in public forum law, he supervises CalAware's legislative and litigation initiatives; conducts workshops on legal compliance; helps design public records audits; supports local sunshine ordinance drafting efforts; writes CalAware Today, a blog on current developments and proposals in the law and best practices; and answers countless queries by phone and e-mail from citizens, journalists, public officials and employees, and lawyers. Francke previously served 14 years as executive director and general counsel to the California First Amendment Coalition, after a 10-year post as legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. He has served as an advisory panel member to the National Center on Courts and the Media; taught journalism law at the Department of Communication at Stanford University; and served as an expert contributor to the 1994 major revisions to the Ralph M. Brown Act and the 2004 ballot proposition making open government a basic right of citizens under the California Constitution. Francke is a 1967 graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a 1979 graduate of McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. Prior to his legal career, Francke worked as a weekly newspaper editor and in military and local government public affairs positions.

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