meeting face a $500 fine or six months in jail, or both.

Charter Provisions
    Burbank and Los Angeles city charters provide that all meetings of the councils shall be open. In fact, the Los Angeles charter goes farther and states that all board meetings shall also be open to the public.
   This latter point is one the Brown Act didn’t cover until this year’s session of the legislature.
    An appellate court ruled last year that the act was not applicable to an informal dinner meeting of the Culver City Planning Commission at which a proposed zone change was discussed.
  But a 1961 amendment to the act, authored by Brown and Assemblyman John Burton (R-San Francisco) clarified and strengthened it. The amendment provides:
    1 — The anti-secrecy laws are extended to planning commissions, library boards, recreation commissions and similar permanent boards or commissions.

Scope Widened
    2 — The act is extended to private agencies supported by public funds and which have a public official as an ex officio board member.
    3 — Violation of the act is a misdemeanor.
    4 — A citizen can obtain a court order to prevent secret meetings.
    5 — It is now a crime for a public official to participate knowingly in a secret meeting where “action is taken,” which refers not only to formal meetings and actual voting, but to any meeting where collective decisions, commitments or promises to make decisions are made.
    Perhaps the true nature of the Brown Act can be emphasized by these words of then Atty.-Gen. Pat Brown, when he ruled persons need not register their attendance at San Diego City Council study sessions as required by a local ordinance:
    “The existence of devices, loopholes or subterfuges which tend to cabin, crib or confine the public from free access to the meetings and deliberations of their local government agencies is contrary to the public policy of the state.
    “The right and ability of the people to have free and open access to all meetings of local legislative bodies is vital to the preservation of an informed electorate.”

    It almost goes without saying that public business should be open to the public.
    The trouble is, when something “goes without saying,” often it is not said at all. And that’s what citizens all over the state found out about their city governments.
    Whenever a City Council wanted to discuss something controversial or politically dangerous, the members merely pushed out the public and tacked an “Executive session sign on the door.

Rubber Stamp Meetings
    Often the public meetings held after the private sessions provided little more than a legalizing rubber stamp for the hammered-out decisions that had been reached behind closed doors.
    Since 1953, the public policy and the law of the state has forbidden any closed meetings of local governing bodies.
    This was the result of the passage in that year of Government Code sections 54950 through 54958 — a piece of landmark

legislation that has become so widely known throughout the United States that several years later the legislature gave it the official name of the Ralph M. Brown Act, one of the few code sections to be honored with the name of its author.

Many Other Bills
    Brown, former Democratic legislator from Modesto, has long opposed secrecy in government. Since the original Brown Act was passed, he has introduced scores of bills to “open up” state and local agencies to public inspection. Most have passed.
     The Modesto lawmaker, who became speaker of the Assembly, recently was appointed an appellate court judge by Gov. [Edmund G. (Pat)] Brown.
    The key words of the Brown Act state that “All meetings of the legislative body of a local agency shall be open and public, and all persons shall be permitted to attend any meeting of the legislative body of a local agency, except as provided in this chapter.”
    The exception refers to personnel matters, which can be considered in a closed session, if city legislation so provides.
    At the last session of the legislature an amendment was passed stipulating that councilmen who take “action” in a closed