Marin government ‘social group’ pressured for transparency

The Marin County Council of Mayors and Councilmembers will vote this month on whether to acknowledge that the organization is legally required to provide public access to its meetings.

As its name suggests, the organization, known as MCCMC, includes representatives from all 11 of Marin’s cities and towns. County supervisors also regularly attend meetings, although they are not paying members nor do they vote.

The group’s main purpose is to facilitate good working relationships among local governments. Its main body meets eight times each year, and there are additional subcommittee meetings.

The vote, set for Feb. 25, comes after MCCMC was served with a cease-and-desist letter last month demanding that it comply with California’s Brown Act. The letter, submitted on behalf of Brooke Schreier Ganz, a Tam Valley resident, asserts that Ganz was denied permission to observe several meetings of the group’s legislative committee last year.

MCCMC pays a Sacramento lobbying firm, Emanuels Jones and Associates, to brief the committee on upcoming legislation, and the committee decides whether to support or oppose the bills.

Ganz said she was told she couldn’t observe the committee’s meeting on Aug. 25 when she clicked on a Zoom link posted on the group’s website.

“I was taken aback that they did not want anyone who was not from their group to sit in and listen to their meeting,” Ganz said.

According to the cease-and-desist order, Tiburon Councilmember Alice Fredericks, the chair of the committee for 18 years, and Fairfax Councilmember Barbara Coler both told Ganz that the meeting was closed to the public because the committee was not subject to the Brown Act.

The cease-and-desist order states that Fredericks again demanded that Ganz leave the meeting when Ganz joined a Zoom meeting on Sept. 22, but Fredericks relented after Ganz explained her rights under the Brown Act, and allowed her to listen to the audio of the remainder of the meeting.

However, the cease-and-desist order states that when Ganz attempted to enter the Zoom meeting on Oct. 27 she was unable to do so. The order asserts that MCCMC secretary Rebecca Vaughn told her the following day that Fredericks had intentionally blocked her from attending.

The order states that after that, the group stopped posting agendas for its legislative committee meetings on its website, “cutting off public access about what was discussed in these now closed-door meetings.”

Neither Fredericks nor Coler nor the current president, Fairfax Mayor Stephanie Hellman, would comment on Ganz’s account of her interactions with the legislative committee.

Annie Cappetta, an attorney who filed the cease-and-desist order on Ganz’s behalf, wrote that if the group fails to comply with the Brown Act that her client may take legal action, “in which case, we will seek an award of court costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees.”

Ganz is the founder of Reclaim the Records, a nonprofit organization that obtains genealogical records from government agencies and makes the records available online for free. She has used open records laws and sued in some cases to get records.

Ganz said she wanted to observe the legislative committee meeting because she is a housing advocate and wanted to learn more about how organizations like MCCMC decide which legislation to support. She contends that the legislative committee, which formulates the group’s position on pending legislation, has been hostile to bills that make it easier for developers to build housing.

She noted that the committee voted to oppose Senate Bill 79, which made it easier to build apartment buildings within a half-mile of major public transit stations, even though it won’t affect Marin because of the county’s low population numbers.

The bill, which was also opposed by the League of California Cities, passed and was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October. SB 79 was amended several times before it was narrowly approved by the Legislature. Marin Assemblymember Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael, voted against it.

“When the legislation was first introduced by Sen. Weiner, it was sweeping and it applied to all cities in California,” said Nancy Hall Bennett, a public affairs manager for the League of California Cities.

In a March 2025 letter to SB 79’s author, Sen. Scott Wiener, Fredericks wrote that MCCMC opposed the bill. She noted then that it would require cities “to ministerially approve higher-density residential projects — up to 7 stories — near public transit stops, regardless of zoning codes.”

Under the Brown Act, “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.” The law’s definition of a “legislative body” includes any entity that receives funds from a local agency.

Hellman wrote in an email that all member agencies pay MCCMC an annual fee of $800 to support the organization’s secretary and other operational functions, including its website.

The organization is also in the second year of a two-year contract with Emanuels Jones and Associates. The contract authorizes payment of up to $93,670 for legislative monitoring and analysis. The cost for the contract is split among the 11 dues-paying municipalities based on a formula that equally weighs population and assessed valuation of property.

The cease-and-desist order states that 2022 emails between MCCMC members that Ganz obtained through a public records request indicates that members were under the impression that the organization was not covered by the Brown Act.

The email exchange involves a member of the public requesting a meeting video. Vaughn, the group’s secretary, emailed members former Mill Valley City Council member Sashi McEntee, Brian Colbert, who was a San Anselmo Town Council member at the time, and Eric Lucan, a former Novato City Council member, asking permission to post a link to the video on the group’s website.

“I don’t think we ever said the meeting would be accessible,” Vaughn wrote. “We’ve never posted them in the past.”

Colbert said, “If we are not obligated to … put up the video then no. There’s a good chance we’ll be Zoom next year and I don’t want to deal with video requests unless we are obligated by statute or by-laws.”

McEntee wrote, “I agree with Brian we don’t need to start posting the meeting videos online. To be clear, MCCMC is a social group allowing elected councilmembers/mayors to form collegial relationships that foster sharing of best practices and allow us to do better jobs as electeds. We are not a Brown Act body.”

Lucan wrote, “I don’t see any issue with sending the link, but might include the disclaimer that we don’t always record the meetings and even if we do, it doesn’t mean that we will store them indefinitely.”

The staff report for the group’s Jan. 28 meeting stated that the organization’s bylaws currently read: “All meetings shall be open to the public and comply with the spirit of the Ralph M. Brown Act.”

The report recommended that the organization remove ambiguity by making an affirmative commitment to making all general and standing committee meetings accessible to the public, posting agendas, providing meeting packets and allowing recordings of meetings.

The report made no mention of posting videos of meetings online.

“We just had a meeting to put it on the agenda to clarify it once and for all,” Fredericks said. “Then it won’t be a controversy anymore.”