On September 13, 2022, the City of Ventura announced that the Ventura Chamber of Commerce was hosting a breakfast meeting where the Mayor would deliver a “State of the City” address. Members of the public could attend the event in person, but only if they purchased a ticket from the Chamber of Commerce.
Before the event, the Ventura County District Attorney, requested an opinion from California Attorney General (AG). The DA asked if the breakfast would be a “meeting” of the City Council under the Brown Act if a majority of the Council attended. The AG initially advised that less than a quorum of the Council should attend the breakfast. On September 22, 2020, the mayor delivered the address during the breakfast event before less than a quorum of the City Council.
In a subsequent written opinion, the AG advised that if a majority of the members of the City Council had attended the event, the event would have constituted a congregation of a majority of the councilmembers at the same time and location to hear—and potentially discuss—an item within their subject matter jurisdiction. These factors would have made the event a “meeting” within the meaning of Government Code section 54952.2(a), and the meeting would have had to complied with the open-meeting requirements of the Brown Act, unless a statutory exception applied.
The AG explained that the Brown Act requires that every meeting of a legislative body of a local agency be open and public, and that “all persons shall be permitted to attend…” No ticket could be required to attend the meeting for a couple of reasons. First, a member of the public cannot be required, as a condition to attendance at the public meeting, to register his or her name, to provide other information, to complete a questionnaire, or otherwise to fulfill any condition precedent.
Second, the Brown Act prohibits a legislative body from conducting a meeting in a facility “where members of the public may not be present without making a payment or purchase.” (Gov. Code, section 54961(a).) These rules apply whenever there is a “meeting” of the legislative body of a local agency, broadly defined as a “congregation of a majority of the members of a legislative body at the same time and location . . . to hear, discuss, deliberate, or take action on any item that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body.” (Gov. Code, section 54952.2(a).)
The AG found that no exception to the Brown Act’s open meeting requirements applied in this hypothetical case. First, the breakfast would not meet the Brown Act exception codified at Government Code section 54952.2(c)(2) for conferences or similar gatherings. A qualifying conference or similar gathering must involve a “discussion” of issues, whereas at the breakfast, the Mayor would give a single speech regarding the conditions in a single city. Second, the breakfast would not satisfy the Brown Act community meetings exception codified at Government Code section 54952.2(c)(3) for “an open and publicized meeting organized to address a topic of local community concern…”. The breakfast meeting would not have been sufficiently “open” because attendees had to purchase a ticket to gain access.