SAN JOSE, Calif. — Chaos ensued last fall in the Los Gatos Town Council chambers as members of a far-right group disrupted meeting after meeting by shouting out of order and lodging personal attacks at council members.
It’s a scene increasingly played out at city council and school board meetings across the country, leading to calls for more law enforcement to stand guard, triggering delays and in some cases, prompting the sessions to be moved back online entirely.
Now, two Silicon Valley lawmakers want to strengthen a nearly-70-year-old law that regulates conduct at public meetings.
State Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, has introduced Senate Bill 1100 — co-authored by Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, — which would update the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open meeting law. The new bill seeks to clarify what constitutes a meeting disruption and when someone could be removed from a public meeting.
The 1953 law allows local jurisdictions to remove individuals or groups who are “willfully interrupting” meetings. But Cortese and Low think that term is too vague.
SB 1100 will give “clearer guidance on what really constitutes an unlawful disturbance,” Cortese told this news organization.”
The bill’s text defines willful interruption as an individual or group who is “intentionally engaging in behavior” that “substantially impairs or renders infeasible the orderly conduct of the meeting.” The bill would also require an individual or group to receive a warning first before they are removed.
“There is actually an abundance of opportunities to have public discourse,” Low said in an interview. “What we were talking about here now, though, is the type of misconduct and discourse behavior that is disruptive and also exacerbates a type of intimidation that is not conducive of the type of democracy we’re hoping for.”
Last October, Cortese and Low sent a letter to Los Gatos Town Manager Laurel Prevetti condemning the “bullying, harassment and intimidation” at several council meetings.
Members of a far-right group — many who identified themselves as supporters of Donald Trump — were disrupting meetings, spouting hate speech and criticizing the council’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
At an Oct. 5 meeting, several members verbally attacked then-Mayor Maurico Sayoc’s son, which led to a confrontation between them and Sayoc’s husband, Jeffrey Scott. The council cleared the chambers and moved back to virtual meetings to prevent further disruptions.
In the press release announcing the bill, Sayoc emphasized the importance of local government serving “residents without disruptions caused by malicious attempts to intimidate people who are participating in democracy.”
As a longtime lawmaker on the San Jose City Council, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and now the state legislature, Cortese said he’s seeing more “intense hostility” now than in prior years.
“During my first eight years in office as noisy as the meetings would get at the San Jose City Council sometimes, I don’t know anyone on the council including myself who ever issued a restraining order against a member of the public,” he said. “It’s something you just see more often now.”
The most recent example is 69-year-old Roland Lebrun, who in December was sentenced to a year’s probation and banned from Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority meetings, facilities and transit vehicles after he made threats about shooting people.
Los Gatos resident Rob Moore, who witnessed many of the disruptions last year, said the council was limited in what they could do to alleviate the turmoil.
“With how the Brown Act was set up there was a lot of freedom for these agitators to do what they will,” he said. “The agitators who showed up to these meetings really had the law down to a tee. They knew how far they could go.”
If SB 1100 makes its way to the governor’s desk, Moore believes much of the hate and vitriol seen last fall in Los Gatos will be eliminated.
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