South Bay water boards have some soul searching to do about transparency
Double standards and technical deficiencies at public meetings mock health protocols and participatory democracy
Editor’s update: Since this story was published, the Sweetwater Authority/South Bay Irrigation District has taken steps to improve transparency via streaming of its board meetings. First, unlike some other water districts, it has continued live video streaming of its meetings AND places the video/audio archives of those meetings online in a timely manner. Also, the board will soon consider upgrading to a higher quality live streaming system, along with other board room improvements. In the meantime, some members of the board are taking care to speak more clearly into their outdated microphones.
Tonight, Jan 25 at 6pm, the Sweetwater Authority Board of Directors will decide whether to continue with virtual-only public meetings or hybrid (virtual and in-person) meetings, or not.
The meeting will be held at 505 Garrett Ave. in Chula Vista. And it could result in greater transparency to the benefit of Sweetwater’s ratepayers, depending on how many of those ratepayers attend the meeting, either in-person or virtually, and speak out.
Sweetwater Authority and its member-agency, South Bay Irrigation District, have held virtual-only meetings for nearly three years now due to the pandemic.
The two agencies share five board members as part of a confusing joint powers agreement. Two additional appointed board members appointed by National City sit on the Authority’s seven-person board.
Together, they provide 190,000 (corrected number Jan 31, 2023) residents of National City, Chula Vista, and Bonita with drinking water.
The SBID restarted in-person meetings on Jan 19, and the SWA will do so tonight, allowing ratepayers to keep a direct eye on their public officials once again.
Considering the fiasco that occurred during back-to-back meetings of the two boards on Jan. 11, the timing for reinstating in-person meetings couldn’t be better.
Directors of the two boards met in-turn inside their cramped board room, sitting just an arm’s length from each other, without wearing masks, while citing the pandemic to keep the public outside.
They deliberated their respective agendas, first as the SBID, then as the SWA, oblivious to the double standard they created.
But karma works in mysterious ways and both meetings fell into disarray due to poor sound quality that rendered the meetings useless to their virtual participants.
The meetings were canceled for rescheduling, but not until well into the second meeting after numerous complaints from this reporter and others.
Back to Normal?
Other local elected governing bodies throughout California will also consider how they will run their meetings in light of the scheduled (Feb. 28) demise of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 State of Emergency.
Under that state of emergency, legislation (AB 361) was passed giving local governing bodies the right to replace in-person meetings with virtual or “remote” (teleconferencing) meetings that diminish transparency.
For now, local governing bodies that want to continue replacing in-person meetings with virtual meetings must cite Newsom’s ongoing state of COVID-19 emergency, continued social distancing mandates by local authorities, or declare that “meeting in person would present imminent risks to the health and safety of attendees.”
The result is that public citizens often cannot see (or even hear) their elected officials in action or adequately petition them for a redress of grievances. That makes a mockery of the First Amendment and the Brown Act, the latter of which states:
Public commissions, boards, councils and other legislative bodies of local government agencies exist to aid in the conduct of the people’s business. The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.
But whatever the SWA board decides tonight, another temporary Brown Act amendment, AB 2449, will kick in as soon as the State of Emergency ends.
That amendment will temporarily expand opportunities for some elected officials to attend public meetings virtually regardless of COVID-19, but will limit the number of times and the circumstances under which that can happen per elected official.
AB 2449 will require local governing bodies to hold public meetings in-person with at least a quorum within their service areas.
Virtual meetings will also improve to include two-way visual-audio communications between officials and the public.
Sadly, AB 2449’s increased virtual transparency fades away by 2026, potentially leaving the public what it already had plenty of before the pandemic: questionable in-person access to water board meetings scheduled for the convenience of water-board directors, without live-streaming or video archives of those meetings to help the ratepayers keep up.
Thanks for being the eyes and ears for the ratepayers. We need more of you out there.