Vice Mayor Jason Lee couldn’t attend Stockton’s City Council meeting this week after Mayor Christina Fugazi said he’d failed to follow a California law relating to teleconferencing.
Tuesday’s City Council meeting, the first to start at 1 p.m. since regular sessions were moved from evenings to afternoons, kicked off with a tense exchange between Fugazi and Lee. The confrontation echoed a dispute during a committee meeting last month in which Lee refused to back Fugazi’s motion to let Councilmember Mariela Ponce participate by teleconference.
This week’s council meeting agenda stated that Lee planned to participate remotely from a hotel conference room in New York City.
But before roll call, the mayor asserted that Lee had failed to post the meeting’s agenda at the hotel, violating a California law governing how elected officials can meet via teleconference while still ensuring public access.
“The location was contacted, somebody actually went to the location, but in speaking to the hotel there was no posting done,” Fugazi said. She didn’t say who went to the location.
“Unfortunately, the vice mayor will not be able to participate in today’s meeting,” she said.
Lee, who had phoned in to the meeting and claimed city staff hadn’t reminded him to post an agenda, tried to interject but was shut down by the mayor.
When the city clerk called roll, Lee was marked absent.
Minutes later, the vice mayor sent an email to media outlets criticizing Fugazi.
“The Mayor intentionally chose to silence the voice of an entire district by refusing to allow me to participate remotely in today’s City Council meeting,” Lee said in the statement. Later that night via social media, he called for Fugazi’s resignation.
What does the law say?
California’s landmark open meetings law, known as the Brown Act, has historically allowed officials to hold public meetings via teleconference — if they meet certain requirements.
Among the regulations: Each official’s teleconference location has to be listed on the agenda and open to the public, according to David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition. Additionally, officials must post a physical copy of the meeting’s agenda at each teleconference location in advance.
Since the beginning of last year, Lee has called into meetings twice, and Councilmember Mario Enriquez has teleconferenced once, according to Stockton City Clerk Katherine Roland. Both gave advanced notice, Roland said, and were responsible for making sure that agendas for those meetings were posted in the location from which they were participating.
Generally, public governing bodies, such as city councils, are required to post physical agendas of upcoming meetings three days in advance so the public can participate. This includes meetings where teleconferencing occurs.
However, recent changes to state law now allow public officials participating by teleconference to skip this requirement in certain situations.
In October, California legislators passed Senate Bill 707, aimed at bolstering public access to remotely held government meetings, which surged when the COVID-19 pandemic started.
The law enshrined new requirements to the Brown Act, including that government bodies such as city councils enable the public to access meetings via teleconference or video call.
Buried in the new regulations are also emergency justifications that elected officials may provide for teleconferencing without advanced notice. They include medical emergencies, travel on council business and contagious illnesses.
Crucially, those emergencies excuse councilmembers from the requirement to post public notice of the meeting at their location in advance, according to Loy.
In his news release, Lee said he needed to participate in Tuesday’s meeting remotely because he was “traveling for work.”
Roland, who is responsible for posting agendas for Stockton’s public meetings, as well as guiding the council through its agendas during meetings and maintaining meeting records, including all council actions, told Stocktonia that Lee’s absence didn’t qualify under the new just-cause exemptions.
“Just-cause exemption is essentially an unplanned event that prevents an update to the agenda timely and the requestor would need to declare the reason and their location at the time of request,” Roland explained via emails to Stocktonia. “For last night’s meeting, the Vice Mayor requested remote attendance in advance of the meeting and a just cause was not required.”
But according to California law, an agenda also was required to be posted at Lee’s location and it needed to be open for in-person public attendance. On Tuesday’s council meeting agenda, Lee had his location listed as a conference room in The Times Square Edition Hotel in New York. Roland confirmed that Lee had informed the city of his need to teleconference in May 6.
When Stockton councilmembers have participated remotely in the past, “we usually operate on an honor system” regarding whether they posted the agenda, Roland told Stocktonia.
However, Roland said, the city has helped in the past with agenda posting requirements, including contacting the location where meeting attendance was to occur.
“Many locations will not post in advance of the meeting … especially if the person is not yet present,” Roland said. “I do not recall the Vice Mayor nor Councilmember Enriquez needing assistance with posting previously.”
Lee says that he had never been informed of the agenda posting requirement.
“The rule has never been communicated to councilmembers or enforced, that I’m aware of,” Lee told Stocktonia by phone Wednesday. He also questioned why no one said anything prior to the meeting, noting he had let the city know well in advance he would be participating remotely. He said no one called him, including the mayor.
“I did all the things to be able to participate and was prepared,” Lee said, adding that the mayor could have used her discretion to not enforce the regulation this time around due to him not knowing he wasn’t in compliance.
When Enriquez teleconferenced earlier this year, he did post the agenda outside, he told Stocktonia.
Roland told Stocktonia she had been notified by the mayor that Lee had not physically posted the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting in advance at his New York hotel.
Jason Teramoto, the mayor’s spokesperson, told Stocktonia that an inquiry was made with hotel staff, who confirmed an agenda had not been visible at the location.
An “in person visual verification was conducted after the notification and after the inquiry to the address was completed,” Teramoto said via text message.
When asked who conducted the visual verification, Teramoto described that information as “privileged.”
Prior teleconferencing fight
On April 30, Ponce tried to use the new emergency rules to teleconference into a Budget Committee meeting, recordings of the session show.
Roland said Ponce wasn’t attending physically “due to a medical concern.”
The committee — which included Lee, Fugazi and Ponce — was scheduled to discuss how to spend roughly $500,000 in leftover funds, including whether to put some of it toward opening police substations in Ponce’s District 2 and Lee’s District 6.
Committee members had to vote at the beginning of the meeting on whether Ponce could teleconference in, Roland said.
The new requirements under SB707 do not specify that Ponce’s request to attend via teleconference under just cause exemptions actually required a vote. According to Loy, “if the (councilmember) claims just cause, they appear to have the right” to participate.
“Councilmember Ponce had requested just cause for the Budget meeting for medical exemption,” Roland confirmed to Stocktonia.
Regardless, Fugazi made a motion — but Lee didn’t second it. The motion died. Ponce couldn’t participate, and Councilmember Michael Blower stepped in as an alternate.
“I don’t want to support a remote person calling in,” Lee said at the meeting. “I think that this matter that we’ve been delaying … should have us all here present.”
Ultimately, the Budget Committee voted 2-1, with Fugazi dissenting, to approve a handful of projects for the leftover funds — including the police substations, encampment cleanups and repairs and financial shortfalls at Stockton’s Pixie Woods Children’s Park.
But on Tuesday, the council voted 6-0 (with Lee absent) to put all of the leftover funds toward fire department repairs, reserving roughly a quarter for Pixie Woods’ expenses. The substations received no funding.