Judge: Fresno City Council budget committee violated open-meeting law

A Fresno County Superior Court judge has ruled that Fresno leaders handled budget negotiations behind closed doors in violation of California’s open-meeting law, a finding that goes to the core of how tens of millions of city dollars were shaped before public approval.

Judge Robert Whalen said the Fresno City Council’s budget committee did not meet the legal requirements for a standing committee, which means the private meetings ran afoul of the Brown Act. Whalen’s May 5 ruling stopped short of imposing sanctions or an injunction, but it still directly concluded that the city violated state law. Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz has emphasized the absence of penalties, while the ruling itself leaves the city facing a clear finding of misconduct in the way it handled one of its most important annual decisions.

The case was filed in November 2023 by the ACLU of Northern California and the First Amendment Coalition. In a statement after the ruling, the First Amendment Coalition said the court confirmed the Fresno City Council’s Budget Committee is a standing committee subject to open-meeting law and that the city failed to post agendas, open the meetings to the public or prepare minutes.

The dispute has centered on a process the city used for years, with reports placing it back at least to 2018 or 2019. Court documents reportedly included at least 11 email threads referring to budget committee meetings outside the city’s June budget process. Those meetings were used to negotiate the final budget with top administration officials before the full council voted in public. The city had argued the committee was exempt because it dissolved after each annual budget cycle and was re-formed the next year.

The ruling also carries broader significance because Fresno had been reported as the only city among California’s 10 largest cities claiming its budget committee was exempt from Brown Act requirements. The Brown Act, which has been in place for 73 years, is meant to keep local government business visible to the public, especially when it involves service levels, department funding and taxpayer spending.

The pressure on City Hall has been building for nearly two years. After a Fresnoland investigation in August 2023, the Fresno City Council disbanded its budget committee along with 10 other private committees. A city Brown Act compliance officer had already questioned the legality of the process in June 2023, before the issue moved into wider public view.

Whalen’s ruling did not bar the city from ever forming a private budget committee again, but it reopened the question of how Fresno will negotiate its budget from here. The next points to watch are whether the city appeals, whether the council creates a new committee structure, and how much of the budget debate gets moved into public session before the next vote.