What's at stake:
Fresno city leaders are headed to the backroom to negotiate the city budget again. That’s because they do not want to open up negotiations over city budget reconciliation to the public, even after a Fresno County Superior Court judge found city leaders in violation of California’s Brown Act, a state law that requires public agencies and local governments to meet in public.
Even though a recent court ruling last month declared the City of Fresno illegally negotiated the city budget in private, city leaders still plan to go into the backroom to reconcile another record-breaking budget this week.
That’s because the way city officials violated state law — by claiming the Fresno City Council’s budget committee was exempt from a state mandate to meet in public — was at the heart of the two-plus-year lawsuit.
City leaders did away with the private budget committee following an August 2023 Fresnoland investigation and a subsequent lawsuit against the city filed by the ACLU of Northern California and the First Amendment Coalition.
However, Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer told Fresnoland that he still plans to privately meet with multiple councilmembers at a time — but never a quorum of the council — to reconcile the city budget before bringing back a revised proposal for council approval.
“The time is so short, between the time they (councilmembers) get their motions in and approved to the time that we have to approve the budget,” Dyer said. “I try to maybe have two or three (councilmembers) in a meeting at the same time, just for the sake of ironing out things.”
That’s similar to the old practice of the mayor meeting with a private committee of three councilmembers, including the council’s leadership. However, Dyer said the difference is there’s no formal budget committee anymore and he’s choosing who to meet with and when, instead of the city council determining that.
“I will spend most of my time probably meeting with the leadership of the council, which is (Nelson) Esparza and (Tyler) Maxwell,” Dyer told Fresnoland, “and then we’ll see who else makes most of the motions.”
In past years, negotiations over the budget’s reconciliation have led to upwards of $30 million in changes to the Fresno city budget. A few years ago, one former councilmember described it as “where the rubber meets the road,” in the budget process.
Yet despite how integral those reconciliation negotiations are, city officials are not interested in opening up those backroom conversations for the public to observe.
Fresno City Council President Nelson Esparza told Fresnoland he thinks the City of Fresno is sufficiently transparent with the public regarding the city budget process. He declined to say whether there is any value to opening up the private budget negotiation process to the public.
“I think because the vast majority of the process is public, at some point, we have to sit down and hash out the final details,” Esparza said of the private budget negotiations. “I do think that there’s a benefit to being able to take the pressure off the mayor and whoever he’s talking to, and be able to, kind of come to an agreement.”
Esparza added that the private negotiations over the budget’s reconciliation are no different than how public budget hearings go.
“It’s not very different at all from the conversation we’re having out front,” Esparza said, referring to the city’s public budget hearings.
But if it’s not that different than an entire week of budget hearings, is that more of a reason for the city’s private budget negotiations to be made public? Fresnoland asked Esparza if he had any thoughts on that.
“I don’t have any,” Esparza said.
Dyer also told Fresnoland he doesn’t think the city’s private budget negotiation process needs to be open to the public. When asked about it, the second-term mayor said that level of transparency doesn’t exist for the state or federal budgets.
He also spelled out what he views as a long, drawn out negotiation process that does not need to be in the public eye because it’s too in the weeds. Dyer said any more transparency would mean the Fresno public would be doing the budget process themselves.
“I think we’re about as transparent as we should be without having the community come in and actually do the budget,” Dyer said with a chuckle.
The negotiations over the budget’s reconciliation takes place between the city council approving budget motions mid-June and the city council considering a revised budget proposal — which comes together after the budget reconciliation takes place in private. That gets done in a matter of a couple days, usually less than a week.
“I think the level of detail and the amount of time that it takes us — I will spend probably 40 to 50 hours on reconciliation at least,” Dyer told Fresnoland.
He also said he asked the City Attorney’s Office whether it’s legal for him to meet with less than a quorum of councilmembers every June to negotiate the budget process.
He said City Attorney Andrew Janz signed off on it.
Janz is the same city leader who signed off on Fresno’s old budget process, which Fresnoland exposed in 2023 and triggered a lawsuit over. Janz helped build a legal defense around the claim that the Fresno City Council’s official budget committee was exempt from state law and its requirements to meet in public.
Fresno County Superior Court Judge Robert Whalen didn’t buy that in his May 4 court ruling last month.
Now, the City of Fresno is trying to relitigate the issue, despite repeatedly claiming in public that the city already scored a “win” in the case.
Just a few weeks after the May 4 court ruling, the City of Fresno is now asking the court for a retrial. With Janz’s name at the top of the motion, the city is claiming Whalen’s ruling was contrary to law, the evidence in the case was insufficient, and he references an “abuse of discretion by the court.”
Janz declined to comment to Fresnoland about the lawsuit and he did not respond to questions from Fresnoland. He did not explain why the City of Fresno is requesting a retrial, while simultaneously claiming a legal victory in the case.
Last week, during the Fresno City Attorney’s Office budget presentation, Janz falsely identified Fresnoland as among the groups that sued the City of Fresno over its illegal budget process. He also incorrectly claimed that Fresnoland declared a legal victory over the City of Fresno.
Janz made no mention of the actual plaintiffs in the two-plus-year lawsuit, the ACLU of Northern California and the First Amendment Coalition.
“We could beat Fresnoland in an injunction case and they declare it a victory,” Janz said during the City Attorney’s Office budget hearing. “We think of it as a win.”
When asked if he had any comment on the verdict of the Brown Act case, Esparza, the highest ranking member of the city council, declined to comment.
Dyer didn’t have much to say either.
“Not really, the Brown Act court ruling — that wasn’t geared towards the Mayor’s Office,” Dyer told Fresnoland. “I wasn’t the one that established the (committee), and that was really something that council had established prior to this administration, and it was with support of the city attorney at that time.”
Dyer negotiated three different city budgets with the Fresno City Council’s illegal private budget committee, and when asked for whether he had any thoughts on that looking back, he said that question should be directed to the city council and the city attorney.
“If a city attorney approves a process,” Dyer said, “that’s the advice that we go by in the City of Fresno.”
