Editorial: DA needs to investigate EDC supes

Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the July 18, 2014, Mountain Democrat in Placerville.

Some of you may have noticed the My Turn column July 2 by all four members of the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors. [The same editorial was posted July 4 in Lake Tahoe News.]

Unusual.

Also, illegal.

Yes, there was no regular item on the board’s agenda for them to approve whoever wrote this on their behalf. It’s been clear to us for a long time that none of the four has ever exhibited a talent for writing. And now it’s also clear none seems to have a talent for knowing the law. Even if one board member happened to actually put together a few bullet points and a lot of general PR pabulum, it still required approval from the other three.

We’re sticking with the theory that someone on staff or someone on contract wrote this 864-word piece.

Why is this illegal? It violates the Brown Act that is also known as the local government open meeting law. Under Section 54952.2 (b) of the Brown Act, “… any use of direct communication, personal intermediaries or technological devices that is employed by a majority of the members of the legislative body to develop a collective concurrence as to action to be taken on an item by members of the legislative body is prohibited.”

The operative word here is “prohibited.”

For the four members of the Board of Supervisors to sign their names to this requires action. To act requires communication. Because this did not appear on an agenda item for the board members to vote in public they either did it secretly behind closed doors without notice or they approved it one at a time through the actions of an intermediary.

We call on the district attorney to investigate this, find out who the intermediary was, publicize that person and send a formal letter to the board to take corrective action for this “unlawful action by the legislative body.”