OCWD's Casual Disregard for Law: Looking Back to Jan. 2015

Note: The Surf City Voice was hacked last December and is under reconstruction. This story was first published Jan. 4, 2015 under a similar headline.

Commentary and analysis

By Debbie Cook

Special to the Surf City Voice

The Orange County Water District runs its public meetings as far from the public view as its obsequious interpretation of the law will allow, always justified by its accommodating legal counsel, Joel Kuperberg.

So the casual disregard for the Brown Act (the California law that protects the public’s right to open government meetings) displayed on behalf of a shadowy applicant during a recent OCWD board meeting does not surprise me.

But it makes me ask, who is really more at fault, the board members and their cronies, who play mischievously behind the public’s back, or the public citizens and their news media who don’t bother to look?

The incident occurred during the Dec. 12 meeting of the Property Management Committee (PMC), held once a month to consider property related issue…