An Appeal To Justice…Cephalopods are designed for relatively free-form environs, like the open seas, or stand-up desks, which seem to be all the rage at the Weekly’s Seaside HQ these days. Lazy as Squid may be, Squid gets antsy sitting day after day on uncomfortable wooden courtroom benches. So Squid was quite ready for Monterey County Superior Court Judge Kay Kingsley to make a decision on Save Our Peninsula Committee’s lawsuit against Monterey County over whether closed-session performance evaluations complied with California’s open-meetings rules, aka the Brown Act.
But it seems even Squid underestimated how ready Kingsley was to get out of there herself: She’s retiring tomorrow, and during a June 6 hearing, seemed pretty ready to check out. She told the attorneys for Save Our Peninsula—if you don’t like my decisions, go ahead and appeal.
“I encourage you to take it up to the Court of Appeal,” Kingsley told attorneys Richard Rosenthal and Greg James. “I would not at all be offended if they have a different analysis.”
Sounds tepid at best, though Kingsley does have a fair point: The Appellate Court guidance on what exactly is allowed in closed-session meetings is rather vague and outdated.
SOP’s not yet sure about an appeal. The case heads to trial on Aug. 25, even though Kingsley advised against that, encouraging SOP instead to just go straight to an appeal. Kingsley also ruled against SOP’s request to force the county to produce additional secret documents, and to release the complete transcript of her secret interviews with county attorneys about the secret meetings.)
Kingsley acknowledged that on some level she agreed with SOP—just not in the courtroom.
Her decisions were made, she said, by “putting aside my own opinions as a citizen, and having much the same concern as petitioners, but the law seems to support [the county].”
If even Kingsley’s concerned, it sounds to Squid like she’s already answered her own rhetorical question, posed during Friday’s hearing: “Should the public be concerned?”
Well, Judge, if you gotta ask…
(2) comments
Well I already replied to this previously, but Judge Kingsley got this one wrong on her way to retirement...Listening to those three blowhard attorneys for the County, who so are so desperate to hide what they have been doing in the practice of closed door personnel sessions, you can bet there was a whole bunch of material that they did not want the public to see the light of day. The people who brought the suit were not even given the opportunity to give their side of the argument..There is NO justice in Monterey County when this rotten Board calls the shots..They have all your taxpayer money behind them folks to pay for their lawsuits, folks...Think about it !!! The little guy doesn't stand a chance...
Government is supposed to be 'by and for the people', not by and for the government. Since there are no consequences for misbehavior and the County intentionally perverts the stated intent of the law, we have no chance to enforce our rights as citizens. Another example of misconduct is the stated priority of the Parks department to secure improvements for ball fields at Toro Park. When did the Board of Supervisors decide that this would be an objective of the County? Putting the cart before the horse is just a waste of tax-payer dollars and resources. In addition it places the burden of policy making not on the government but on concerned citizens who have to spend time, money and effort in correcting the course of government run amuck. Too often, staff believes that it is vested with the right to govern and decide instead of the elected officials and the citizens they represent. Judge Kingsley in this case has kicked the can down the road and left it to concerned citizens to enforce the laws we have already enacted.
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