Gilroy’s City Council will take another look at videotaping its
closed sessions, after the city’s open government commission voted
2-1 on Monday to revisit the issue.
Gilroy’s City Council will take another look at videotaping its closed sessions, after the city’s open government commission voted 2-1 on Monday to revisit the issue.
Councilmen Perry Woodward and Peter Arellano favored videotaping the meetings, while Mayor Al Pinheiro dissented, saying that keeping such meetings private ensured the free flow of conversation and that the council had already discussed the issue last year. The commission makes decisions regarding the city’s 10-month-old open government ordinance.
“I don’t see any compelling reason today that we should take another bite of the apple,” Pinheiro said.
Pinheiro echoed comments by City Attorney Linda Callon, who said that videotaping meetings may interrupt the free flow of conversation and that keeping certain matters in closed session helps protect the city. He also noted that the council rejected the idea of videotaping last year and he did not feel that enough had changed in the past year to warrant making that kind of change.
The mayor requested that Callon produce a list of Santa Clara County cities that videotape closed sessions, and Milpitas was the only city to do so.
Woodward, who chairs the open government commission and who helped draft the city’s open government ordinance, has long advocated for videotaping closed sessions.
“I continue to believe that it’s a good idea – that having these is a furtherance of transparency,” he said.
Arellano said he favored taping those meetings as long as there are strict regulations on what information is released.
“This open government thing has grown on me,” Arellano said.
Commissioners also discussed the Nov. 16 closed session on potential litigation against MediLeaf, which Arellano, Woodward and Councilman Craig Gartman boycotted because they believed it violated the open government ordinance and the state Brown Act. They said after the meeting that the city should have agendized a resolution that was approved during the meeting, and that the public should have been able to comment on zoning and licensing issues that were discussed during the meeting. Similarly, Superior Court Judge Kevin Murphy agreed with their conclusions during a hearing on MediLeaf on Tuesday, saying that the city violated the state’s Brown Act. However, Callon defended approving the resolution in closed session, saying that council members were discussing issues related to litigation and that the resolution never would have become public if council members did not approve it.
Woodward said figuring out the application of the open government ordinance was a work in progress, mentioning that the council initially had discussed city salaries in closed session before discussing the matter again in open session.
“We’re learning as we go on implementation of some of these things,” he said.
