At the Wednesday, April 26 meeting of the California State Assembly Local Government Committee, CSDA provided lead testimony on its sponsored measure amending the Ralph M. Brown Act, Assembly Bill 557 (Hart). As shown in this video, AB 557 unanimously passed out of the committee on an 8-0 vote. Given that the bill is non-fiscal, it was sent to the Assembly Floor for its next vote.
Over 118 CSDA members and interested agencies throughout California have joined CSDA in supporting AB 557, most of which were listed in the formal Committee analysis for AB 557. If your agency wishes to get involved and support CSDA’s efforts to get this bill signed into law, visit our Take Action page for AB 557 and consider sending in a letter of support using either the sample template provided or by using the automated form letter process.
Several Brown Act-related bills dealing with teleconferencing were introduced this legislative session. Assembly Member Pacheco introduced Assembly Bill 817, a bill that would have allowed for “subsidiary bodies” to use remote meeting procedures similar to those enacted by Assembly Bill 361 (R. Rivas, 2021) without regard to an emergency. AB 817 will not be moving forward this year and has now been made into a two-year bill. Similarly, Assembly Bill 1379, introduced this year by Assembly Member Papan, will also not be moving forward; AB 1379 would have revised the teleconferencing procedures added to the Brown Act by Assembly Bill 2449 (Rubio, 2022) by abolishing the 2026 sunset present in the latter bill, while also revising several of the procedural elements included in the AB 2449 remote meeting process.
Other relevant Brown Act bills that survived their respective policy committee hearings include Senate Bill 411 (Portantino) and Senate Bill 537 (Becker).
Though SB 411 passed out of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee, its revisions to the Brown Act now only apply to “a neighborhood council that is an advisory body […] of a city with a population of more than 3,000,000 people” (i.e., the City of Los Angeles) that is subject to the Brown Act.
SB 537 adds another set of circumstances to the list of “just cause” reasons under which a member of a legislative body may participate remotely under the AB 2449 remote meetings framework, expanding that list to include that the care of “an immunocompromised child, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, spouse, or domestic partner” is sufficient reason to participate remotely in a meeting under the AB 2449 procedures. SB 537 also permits certain multijurisdictional (i.e., “a legislative body that includes representatives from more than one county, city, city and county, special district, or a joint powers entity”) legislative bodies with appointed board members to allow members to participate remotely pursuant to provisions similar to that of AB 2449, provided that the remote members participate from their offices or another location in a publicly accessible building, and that either or those locations is greater than 40 miles from the site of the in-person meeting. SB 537 also passed out of the Senate Governance and Finance Committee, heading next to the Senate Judiciary Committee where it is scheduled to be heard today, on May 2.
For questions about Assembly Bill 557 and other Brown Act legislation, contact CSDA Legislative Representative Marcus Detwiler at marcusd@csda.net.
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