Dozens gathered at a round table-style discussion in Lompoc’s City Council chambers on the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 9, for a special council meeting. The meeting’s agenda was simple: The assistant city attorney would summarize the Ralph M. Brown Act, and the attendees would discuss with their council members how to improve openness and public participation in city government.
The theme was transparency.
Kicking off the meeting, Mayor Bob Lingl listed three rules: Be polite and respectful, stay positive, and stick to the agenda.
Those rules held fast for the 2 1/2 hour meeting’s duration—for the most part, anyway.
In recent months, news of Lompoc’s city government has often been coupled with questions about its openness with the public. In April, Councilmember Jim Mosby hosted an informal transparency forum to answer residents’ questions on the subject. In July, the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office issued its second Brown Act warning to the City Council, the first of which came in November 2014. And last Tuesday (Aug. 9), the City Council obliged to repeated demands for a special session on the topic of transparency.
But Lingl told the Sun the transparency issues don’t run as deep as they seem. He said all the requests for last week’s special session came from Lompoc resident Jane Behr, who also wrote the cease and desist letters that ultimately led to July’s Brown Act warning.
Still, Behr isn’t alone in her concerns—by issuing the warning, the District Attorney’s Office validated her criticisms.
Behr was also one of the most vocal residents at the Aug. 9 meeting, insisting the City Council could do more to involve the public in its processes.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. If nobody shows up here and tells you to do better, you have no reason to do better,” Behr said at the meeting. “That’s what I’m trying to do. You guys can do a better job.”
She went on to say she believed the council’s allegedly opaque dealings were rooted not in dishonesty but in a desire for efficiency, which is compromised once the public gets involved.
“I want us to continue to get better, and I want the public to know more about what’s going on,” Behr said.
Her suggestion: an ad hoc committee on transparency, which she claimed would provide a “systemic solution.” At the special session, Lingl agreed to agendize the proposed committee for an upcoming City Council meeting.
But he told the Sun that as of now, he’s against the idea.
Following the meeting, Behr handed out a five-page document detailing what the ad hoc committee would ideally do. Lingl said his impression of the document was that Behr “wants to run the city.”
“That’s not the way government is operated,” Lingl said. “We are the elected officials. We hire professionals to run the city for us. We don’t mind getting advice from the community, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for an ad hoc committee to dictate to the government what should be done and why it should be done.”
That said, Lingl added that when the item is agendized, he’ll listen to all the arguments before finalizing his stance.
Council members aimed to keep the special session discussions focused on improvements for the future, rather than rehashing the past. Still, the past came up. The most discussed point of concern regarded the shopping cart ordinance, which would require businesses that own shopping carts to create and implement plans to retrieve discarded carts, or else pay a fine. Disgruntled residents claimed discussions on these ordinances were not well advertised in advance and caught business owners by surprise.
Some people suggested the City Council use social media to put the word out about these types of discussions. Others said it was the public’s responsibility to keep an eye on council agendas and stay informed on what would come up in future meetings.
But for the most part, attendees complained about the attitude at council meetings, saying they often felt too intimidated to speak, especially when Lingl would interrupt them during public comment to ask them to state their names, some attendees said. Behr added that she felt it was “inappropriate” for the city staff to sit alongside the council members at the front of the chamber during City Council meetings.
Toward the end of the meeting, Behr assured the council members that she’s not out to get them.
“I don’t want you to think I’m trying to make your life miserable,” she said.
But in his interview with the Sun, Lingl questioned Behr’s motives. Lingl, who is running for re-election to the mayoral seat in November, is racing against former mayor John Linn—whose campaign is run by Behr.
“She wants to paint a picture that there’s a problem right now with the city while I’m there,” Lingl told the Sun. “It’s just a little bit of a coincidence that she happens to be the campaign manager for my opponent.”
Though Lingl said he doesn’t think there’s valid reason for concern about City Council transparency, he added that as long as the public believes the issue exists, it exists.
“I do not think we have a problem with transparency,” Lingl said. “However, if there is perception out there that we have a problem, if the public thinks we have a problem, then there is a problem. If they think there is a problem, that’s why the meeting on Tuesday was a good meeting, to get it cleared up.”
Staff Writer Brenna Swanston can be reached at bswanston@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 18-25, 2016.