Brown Act violation allegations being investigated by the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office represented a hot topic during the Oct. 16 mayoral candidate forum in Lompoc.
How could the subject not be on everyone’s mind? It’s been in the news since April and indicates there are suspicions that the City Council is somehow trying to avoid following the letter of the law.
Bo Poertner, who moderated the forum for the Lompoc Chamber of Commerce, asked the candidates—Bob Lingl, current council member, and John Linn, the incumbent—about what he called a “series of missteps.”
That list of steps started with the failure of the Lompoc Housing and Community Development Corporation, which a grand jury report said was a “failure of oversight” from the city. Poertner continued through the increases in water and wastewater rates, the Brown Act violation allegations, and the swap meet fiasco—which is still an ongoing saga.
“Is there not a crisis in leadership?” he asked the candidates.
“Any time we make a decision, there’s an opportunity for people to criticize,” Lingl said in response. “There’s more decisions being made right than not.”
Linn said he wasn’t really a part of the housing development corporation’s collapse because of when he was elected; he said there would be another hearing on the water and wastewater rates on Oct. 21; and he explained that the swap meet was moving from the downtown parking lot to the college. He also said that the Brown Act wasn’t violated.
There are two instances in particular from which these allegations arise: a Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting during which Linn and two other Lompoc City Council members, neither of whom were Lingl, spoke in favor of the county approving a recreational facility on Jim Mosby’s land outside of Lompoc; and a City Council meeting during which the city took a position on the Mosby issue, which was added to the meeting’s agenda at the last minute.
“It’s not a city issue,” Lingl said. “We should not have been involved with it.”
Lingl said the Brown Act is the first thing a newly elected council member is schooled on, and it’s not necessarily a matter of whether the law was actually violated, but rather the perception that it was.
“We have to stay so far away from that [gray area] so that there’s no misperception that we’re violating it,” Lingl said.
Another topic many of the forum’s questions circled around was economic development and what Lompoc needs to do to bring in more jobs and revenue. The candidates agreed that the recently approved 40-acre industrial park was a good start, but that in the future, the city would need more of the same.
“A lot of good things are happening right now, and it’s because of our prior successes,” Linn said, referring to DenMat’s 2013 move to Lompoc and Allan Hancock College’s recently completed Public Safety complex. He added that the industrial park is a great opportunity for the city to go out and recruit quality businesses. Lingl agreed.
“We need more than one industrial park,” Lingl said. “We need to bring clean, high-paying, industrial jobs here.”
To watch the forum, visit the city’s website, cityoflompoc.com.