SAN DIEGO COUNCIL PRESIDENT DIDN’T PUBLICLY NOTICE MAYOR’S SPEECH

Sean Elo-rivera said City Attorney’s Office advised no need to

Last year, one day before San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria presented his first State of the City address, thencouncil President Jennifer Campbell issued a memo announcing the speech as a public meeting of the City Council.

“The City Council will convene for a special meeting on Wednesday, January 13, 2021 at 6:00 p.m. for the following item: In the matter of the Mayor’s Annual State of the City Address,” she wrote.

The one-page memo was designed to comply with the Ralph M. Brown Act, the 1953 law that requires a three-day advance notice of meetings of public boards, commissions or councils.

But this year’s State of the City Address delivered by Gloria on Wednesday night, again presented online due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, was never legally noticed by Council President Sean Elorivera.

The State of the City address is broadly promoted by city officials, so residents who follow San Diego politics likely were aware of the presentation.

But because a quorum of council members generally attend the function, the event for years has been formally noticed as a public meeting. It’s not clear what impact the lack of formal notification may have had.

The new leader of the City Council said he sought and received an opinion from the City Attorney’s Office that said no public notice of the meeting was required.

“We proactively sought feedback on notice and public participation requirements from the City Attorney’s Office, which determined that the State of the City address is a ‘social or ceremonial occasion’ or a ‘conference or similar gathering open to the public’ and is exempt from the Brown Act’s noticing requirements,” Elo-rivera said in a statement.

The council president did not explain why he asked city lawyers about noticing the meeting rather than simply complying with the notification rules. The City Attorney’s Office said Campbell’s memo announcing the speech a year ago was voluntary.

“That previous posting was not required by the Brown Act (Gov’t Code section 54952.2(c)), which states that ‘a conference or similar gathering open to the public that involves a discussion of issues of general interest to the public’ and ‘a purely social or ceremonial occasion’ are events that are exempt from the Brown Act,” a spokeswoman for City Attorney Mara Elliott said in a statement.

Another section of the law says a publicly noticed meeting “means any congregation of a majority of the members of a legislative body at the same time and location, including teleconference location … to hear, discuss, deliberate or take action on any item that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body.”

San Diego attorney Cory Briggs, who unsuccessfully challenged City Attorney Mara Elliott’s re-election bid in 2020, said the state’s openmeetings law requires that official proceedings such as the State of the City address be publicly noticed when attended by the City Council.

“The publication of agendas is the official mechanism by which the public learns about the City Council’s activities,” Briggs said. “The public has been trained to look to the agendas for important City Council-related information.”

The city’s decision against publicly noticing the speech is equivalent to not telling the members of the public where the event is scheduled or that they are welcome to attend, Briggs said.

“It’s just another example of government secrecy,” he said.

In his speech Wednesday, delivered in a nearly empty San Diego Convention Center as a result of the ongoing pandemic, Gloria said the state of the city was “ready.”

“Our challenges are great. The road ahead is long. And there is much work to do,” the mayor told his online audience. “But I’ve never been afraid of hard work, and neither is our city.”

jeff.mcdonald@sduniontribune.com