SANTA CRUZ >> A committee responsible for appointing and nominating city representatives in Santa Cruz County to regional boards, commissions and agencies is marred in controversy after a recent public inquiry caused the county to quickly reassess its view that the meetings could be held outside of the public eye.

For more than 20 years, the City Select Committee — composed of mayors from all four cities in the county — conducted its business in private settings, often over lunch at local restaurants, according to meeting minutes dating back to 2001 that were shared with the Sentinel. While the four mayors are the committee’s only voting members, they were often joined by the four city managers, the chair of the county Board of Supervisors and the county administrative officer.

The committee has been meeting remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic and convened Jan. 27 to discuss, among other things, nominations to fill the vacant Central Coast seat on the powerful California Coastal Commission, which regulates the use of land and water in coastal zones. While city select committees in Santa Cruz, San Mateo and Monterey counties can all add as many nominations as they’d like to the pool of candidates for the seat, only California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon wields the power to make the final selection.

The January meeting was the first with new Mayors Eduardo Montesino, Margaux Keiser, Fred Keeley and Jack Dilles. But after decades of treating the meeting as if the provisions of the Brown Act — a state code meant to guarantee the public’s right to attend and participate in local legislative body meetings — did not apply, the county abruptly reversed course.

“You can read the Brown Act and interpret it in a way that this meeting, which doesn’t include a quorum of any local legislative body, isn’t covered,” wrote Santa Cruz County spokesperson Jason Hoppin in an email to the Sentinel. “The County recently changed our views on that in response to an inquiry from a member of the public. We were advised to redo the selection process for the Coastal Commission nominee(s).”

David Loy is the legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit public interest organization with expert Brown Act knowledge. In his view, the issue was unambiguous.

“I think that the committee was clearly subject to the Brown Act,” Loy told the Sentinel. “Best case scenario is that somebody was just asleep at the wheel for a long time.”

The committee reconvened Feb. 21 for its public “redo” of the January meeting, where it adopted committee bylaws that will require it to provide public notice for the meetings in compliance with the Brown Act. But for some in the community, the damage had already been done.

“It’s really hard for me to have any trust in what this committee is doing at this point,” said Sabina Holber during public comment. “I know a lot of people don’t watch these meetings and I know a lot of people don’t care about these meetings, but I’m a citizen that does care about these meetings and I have a right to know what’s going on in our government.”

Keeley also didn’t hesitate to voice his displeasure with the situation.

“I think this was a foreseeable problem where we got bad advice,” remarked Keeley, adding that it was “stunning” that the committee had been “functioning in error for so long.”

“We owe a very big apology to the public for having not comported ourselves in the appropriate manner,” he said.

When asked by Keeley how the committee had functioned without complying with the Brown Act for two decades, Santa Cruz County Administrative Officer Carlos Palacios said part of the confusion stems from the “co-comingling” of two different meetings.

“It combined a mayors meeting — which is actually not subject to the Brown Act — in which policy issues of common concern were discussed,” said Palacios. “It combined that with a selection committee meeting, which is subject (to the Brown Act).”

Palacios said he inherited the structure when he became the administrative officer in 2017 and was told by the county administrator at the time that the meeting was not subject to the Brown Act. Still, Palacios said he owned the fact that he didn’t follow up with the county’s legal counsel to get a formal opinion.

However, San Mateo and Monterey counties also appear divided on the Brown Act issue.

According to the San Mateo County’s City Selection Committee website, officials explicitly state that committee meeting minutes are not required because the committee does not fall under Brown Act provisions.

Meanwhile, a Monterey County official shared a copy of the Monterey City Selection Committee rules and regulations with the Sentinel as amended in 2011 stating that “all meetings shall be conducted in general accordance with prevailing parliamentary law and the California Government Code (the Ralph M. Brown Act) Section 54950 et seq.”

The Monterey County official noted that the committee is created by statute and is a separate legal entity, not a constituent part of Monterey County. However, according to the statute, the clerk of the Board of Supervisors does serve as the clerk to the City Selection Committee.

The Coastal Commission process began Jan. 17 when Rendon sent a letter to current Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors Chair Zach Friend requesting nominations from the board and the selection committee by March 3.

According to Palacios who, as the ex-officio clerk of the board helped facilitate the redo meeting, Keeley, Capitola City Councilmember Yvette Brooks and county Board of Supervisors Chair Zach Friend were “discussed” as candidates for the Coastal Commission at the January meeting.

Keeley said he withdrew his name from contention a few days after the first meeting and because the Board of Supervisors also has the power to put forward Coastal Commission candidates of its own, the committee declined any discussion of recommending Friend at its February meeting.

According to Keiser, Brooks had previously expressed interest in serving on the Coastal Commission and the committee followed through with approval of that nomination, which it has subsequently sent to Rendon.

Meanwhile, the Board of Supervisors will provide a Coastal Commission nomination opportunity at its Feb. 28 board meeting and, according to the meeting’s consent agenda, 3rd District Supervisor Justin Cummings put his name forward and was the only supervisor to do so.

As for City Select Committee meetings moving forward, Palacios said they will be held quarterly and locations will rotate across the four cities. Meeting agendas and locations will be posted in advance on the same web page where the Board of Supervisors’ agendas are listed, but if the committee has no business to attend to, the meeting will be canceled.

While Loy said it was “about time” the committee began operating within the Brown Act provisions, he said the “sunshine” law is meant to bring transparency and elicit corrective actions such as these.

“The remedies in the Brown Act are designed to promote fixing the problem as quickly as possible, it’s not primarily a punitive statute,” Loy told the Sentinel. “It is designed to cure and correct the problems respectively as much as possible.”