BART Police Committee meets (reportedly)

After the tragic shooting of Oscar Grant III at the hands of a BART police officer on New Year’s Day, the public rightfully demanded answers. The transit agency’s board of directors sprang into action and created a committee made up of four board members. (Download BART Committee.)

I called BART spokesman Linton Johnson to see if the Police Department Review Committee has held any public meetings.

“Plenty,” was his response. Really? I haven’t seen any meeting notices.

The law doesn’t require meeting notices for this committee, I was told. Sure, but the law doesn’t prevent giving notice, either, I pointed out.

Mr. Johnson explained that sometimes, at regular BART board meetings, committee members will announce when the next committee meeting will be held. You can learn when the next meeting is by watching the previous board meeting on the Internet. (I checked, and there’s no such announcement in any of the posted clips.)

I asked if it is it fair to expect members of the public to figure that out. Apparently, it is.

I tried to get some clarification: Committee meetings are open to the public, but no one is going to tell us where and when they are held?

Well, we don’t want a crowd at every meeting — sometimes the committee needs to meet in a more intimate setting, he replied. When the committee reports to the full BART board, people can comment, plus committee members talk to community leaders and organizations all the time.

Fair enough, I thought, and I hung up the phone. However, there’s something that still makes me uneasy about what I learned. I’m not saying every meeting should be open to the public — there may be times when a closed session is necessary to discuss legal matters, or the like — but it seems to me that our esteemed BART directors are missing the point.

The perception is that the BART police force is an insular and unaccountable organization, so it stands to reason that an investigatory committee made up of the board’s own members that convenes unnecessarily secret “public” meetings might not be the best strategy for restoring public confidence.

Comments

[Terry Francke, General Counsel, Californians Aware]

The BART response you got to the effect that "the law doesn’t require meeting notices for this committee" is in error. The BART board is subject to the local agency meeting law, the Brown Act (http://ag.ca.gov/publications/2003_Intro_BrownAct.pdf). That statute defines, as a species of subordinate body that is also bound by the open meeting requirements as a "legislative body", a "committee, board, or other body of a local agency . . . created by . . . resolution, or formal action of a legislative body. However, advisory committees, composed solely of the members of the legislative body that are less than a quorum of the legislative body are not legislative bodies, except that standing committees of a legislative body . . . which have a continuing subject matter jurisdiction . . ." are legislative bodies covered by the Act.

The facts that the police committee was created by the Board in a unanimous formal action, and that it is a standing committee given a continuing subject matter jurisdiction, are obvious as detailed in the "BART committee document" linked to your post.

One of the consequences of being subject to the Act is that the committee's meetings must be preceded by publicly posted agendas. For regular meetings the agenda must be posted 72 hours in advance, in some place accessible to the public around the clock, and for special meetings the posting horizon is 24 hours. If the body does not adopt a regular meeting schedule (which as a standing committee it is not required to do) then its meetings would all be deemed special meetings, but still have the 24-hour posting requirement, and also be required to provide direct written notice of the meeting 24 hours in advance to any local newspapers or broadcasters who have submitted a written notice of such meetings.

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