California State Brown Act Cure and Correct letter regarding violation of the Brown Act that occurred during the LA City Council meeting of November 8, 2013

UPDATED: 

The following is a California State Brown Act Cure and Correct letter regarding violations of the Brown Act. The latest violation (detailed below) happened during the LA City Council meeting of November 8, 2013 on Agenda Item # 8:

Contained here is a California State Brown Act Cure and Correct letter from John Walsh related to the serious violations of the California State Ralph M. Brown Act by Los Angeles Deputy City Attorney Dion O’ Connell that occurred during the LA City Council meeting of November 8, 2013 on Agenda item # 8.

ATTENTION: City Attorney Mike Feuer

LA City Council speakers whose appearances before the City Council are governed by the State Brown Act are being loudly, rudely and unlawfully interrupted continually by Deputy City Attorney Dion O’Connell who is clearly acting in breaching his limited authority and violating the said Ralph M. Brown Act, which stands as California State Law.

When L.A. deputy city attorneys other than Mr. O’ Connell take your place at a City Council meeting, City Attorney Feuer, such unlawful interruptions of speakers from the general public do not happen!

Mr. Dion O’Connell’s repeated attempts at intimidation of targeted speakers during Brown Act-mandated public hearings on agenda items and general public comment related to matters under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles City Council must cease and desist now.

City Attorney Feuer, these violations of the Brown Act are carried out in your name and under your authority! Therefore you must take action now to prevent such illegal acts occurring in the future!

Mr. O’Connell’s  unlawful  moves  clearly indicate that his personal motivation for these Brown Act violations  stems from  his ( plain for all  to see) animosity  toward  certain (specific) Brown-Act protected public speakers the moment when  we appear at the podium!

If you, as City Attorney, do not acknowledge such Brown Act violations and refuse to take swift action to cure and correct them, then we’ll see  one another in court, won’t we? 

May I personally remind you, Mr. Feuer, of the recent embarrassing drubbing you took in Federal Court when Civic Advocate “Zuma Dogg” filed a highly successful Brown Act violation lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. My lawsuit would prove for you to be déjà vu all over again!

You must reply to this Brown Act complaint correspondence under the law before I can file a court challenge. You may comply with the demands of this correspondence and admit to violations of the Brown Act and reform your illegal behavior! 

Or you can force me to take you to Court the exact same way that Mr. Zuma Dogg did. And he winded up beating the pants off you not long ago in Federal Court!

Please observe the legal deadline for your response to this official complaint. The deadline for response to this and all other cure and correct letters may be found in the Brown Act itself!

Therefore, City Attorney Mike  Feuer, please promptly review your obligation under law  to this first  step cure and collect letter and answer  this cure and correct letter directly addressed to you promptly by email as well as postal mail. Don’t try to ignore this complaint! That will only compound your legal troubles.

During the public hearing that  is mandated by the California State Ralph M. Brown Open Meetings Law for agenda item # 8 of  the 11/8/13  LA City Council meeting, I , John Walsh, having submitted a written request to speak on this item , was duly recognized to speak for up to one minute by  the Acting City Council President , Mr. Mitch Englander, whose office, I might interject parenthetically, is under  a widespread investigation that was  prompted by a female staff member’s lawsuit complaining of sexual harassment that directly involved City Councilman Mitch Englander allegedly talking dirty to her! 

My public testimony on item # 8  was mandated  and guaranteed by the State Brown Act ; but after I was recognized, had identified myself and started speaking at the podium , I was interrupted  before my  one minute  allotment of speaking time had expired and shouted down by Mr. Dion O’Connell in violation of the Brown Act!

Deputy Dion who drowned  out my  words by exclaiming into his  live public microphone  with the volume turned up to an ear-splitting  level in a manner chosen to daze and distract me that in his personal opinion I was not speaking on the item 8 topic!

If there are any disputes about what happened then and there, the entire LA City Council meeting of November 8, 2013 is available to view at lacity.org  by a future judge and jury!

Such behavior by Mr. Dion O’Connell is clearly a major violation of the Brown Act (Open Meetings) law! The Brown Act gives the City Attorney no right to attempt to interfere with or otherwise disorient a Brown Act-protected member of public speaking at the lectern by attempting to drown out his or her words!

Mr. Walsh then made a split second decision to step aside to avoid further harassment and to file a timely Brown Act Complaint cease and desist/cure and correct communication with the City Attorney against the Deputy City Attorney Dion O’Connell’s unlawful personal attempt to silence/ squelch me. So I departed the podium right away.

The Acting City Council President Englander stood mute through this attempt to confuse and distract the speaker while my speaking time was running out on the speakers’ clock!

Acting President Englander refused to rule that Deputy City Attorney O’Connell was indeed out of order for the Deputy City Attorney’s baseless, illegal and un-called for charge that I was not strictly speaking to the agenda item #8 topic …which Mr. O’Connell made through his own  live microphone to Acting President Englander and was  heard extremely loudly to  the discomfort of all those attending this meeting at City Council  Chambers and  to the discomfort of tens of thousands watching  the City Council  proceedings at  City Channel 35 and  on the World Wide Web!

(Please, Mr. Feuer, review the video of this City Council meeting of November 8, 2013 which will corroborate every statement herein made!)

Subsequently, Acting  City Council President Englander with my back turned to him as I made my way up the aisle, (I am 70 years old.) returning to my seat, inexplicably  and unilaterally ruled that I was disruptive of the meeting and ordered the police immediately to remove me from City Council Chambers!

Acting-City Council President Mitch Englander declared John Walsh to be “disruptive” of the meeting without any explanation at all … and, most importantly, without taking a vote of City Council members on whether or not I should be banished … which is required by LA City Council’s own rules! 

Acting City Council President Englander seriously over-stepped his authority then! Therefore I am entitled to sue for damages as a Brown Act speaker ejected unlawfully from the said meeting as a naked form of intimidation! The same way that Zuma Dogg was unlawfully treated!

Zuma Dogg’s lawsuit as you well know, Mr. City Attorney, was successful and at a future hearing a Federal judge will preside over a trial this January that will determine how much in monetary recompense the City of LA will be required to pay out to Mr. Zuma Dogg for the mistreatment he suffered while speaking before the LA City Council under the protection of the State Brown Act … where he was harshly treated by LA City Council the same way I have been…roughly speaking, of course!

Acting President Mitch Englander ordered me ejected from the City Council meeting in a failed attempt at intimidation, creating a separate Brown Act violation that I am also ready to appeal unless you start curing and correcting, so to speak, Mr. City Attorney Feuer.

A word to the wise: May I  remind you and  remind the  LA City Council members once again that  when you illegally treated another Brown Act-protected speaker (self-named “Zuma Dogg”) in the same illegal manner that you are now treating  yours truly , you suffered an ignominious defeat  by Zuma Dogg in Federal Court!

Have you forgotten so soon that Zuma Dogg, in response to City Council mistreatment, sued the city of LA and ended up exuberantly celebrating his stinging victory in Federal Court for Brown Act Rights and First Amendment Rights? 

The  exact amount of monetary damages the plaintiff, Mr. Zuma Dogg, will ultimately receive from the City of Los Angeles will be determined during  the first month of the New Year by a follow-up court case ordered by the  Federal magistrate who  heard the original case!

Why did you have to learn the hard way, Mike, that under the Brown Act no city official has the right to interrupt any member of the public who is duly speaking! That right is reserved only for the presiding officer of the legislative body … which in my case was the acting City Council President Englander! 

Under Brown Act law, Mr. Dion O’Connell doesn’t posses the right to drown out a Brown Act-protected public speaker! Disagree, Mr. LA City Attorney? Then put it in writing and send me your legal opinion!

Any Deputy City Attorney merely possesses the simple, routine authority to confer with the City Council President by way of an off-public microphone side-bar one-on-conference during which the Deputy City Attorney is free to offer his opinion (in private) that the speaker from the general public who is then at the podium is not speaking to the topic of the agenda item at hand, and so in the deputy City Attorney’s sole opinion may be in violation of the State Brown Act!

Deputy City Attorney Dion O’Connell is always in violation of the Brown Act when he persists in disrupting the public speaker’s flow of words with a string of spontaneous mini-filibusters which obviously betray a serious personal dislike for the Brown Act- protected public comment speaker in question at the podium!

After  a private mini-conference that’s held without disturbing the public speaker, the President of the City Council may  agree with the Deputy City Attorney and  then inform the Brown Act-protected speaker at the lectern that he or she is off-topic as relates to a particular agenda item. Such a decision is, of course, subject to the filing of a subsequent cure and correct complaint letter to the City Attorney similar to this one … and subject ultimately to a law suit which may be filed by the aggrieved party if the City Attorney persists in upholding the Brown Act violation in question in response to a pertinent cure and correct letter of complaint!

The City Council President ,in my case  Englander, was  under a Brown Act legal obligation to admonish the deputy  City Attorney  O’Connell not to interrupt the Brown-Act  protected speaker at the podium at mid-speech  because all conservations held between the  President and deputy City Attorney related to Brown Act legality of the public speaker’s comments while he or she is speaking at the lectern must be  held  in private and not prove to be disruptive of the Brown- Act protected  public speaker who is attempting  at the  podium to deliver her or his message without facing deliberate distraction !

It must be noted that in this particular instance City Attorney Englander publicly refrained from doing so! (The two of them sit just a few feet away from each other but did not confer with one another over this agenda item! 

In other words, Deputy City Counsel O’Connell should have been instructed by Acting Council President Mr. Englander to refrain from interrupting the public speaker who must remain always cloaked in the protections afforded by the California State Ralph M. Brown Act!

The President of the City Council also has the right to declare a public speaker off-topic without even consulting the City Attorney. But that was not the case here either! 

If in agreement with the Deputy City Attorney in a private colloquy, the City Council President then decides to interrupt the public speaker at the lectern in order to inform that person of the Chair’s decision that he or she is off topic that is permissible under the Brown Act. 

But that also was not the case here in relation to Agenda Item 8!

It should be noted that Deputy City Attorney Dion O’Connell has fallen into the bad habit of loudly heckling public speakers in this manner for years in his  official capacity as Deputy City Attorney including  distracting other Brown Act-protected public speakers  at this same November 8, 2013 City Council meeting

Awaiting your prompt response after you practice due diligence by reading the post script below! 

POSTSCRIPT: 

The City Attorney 0r his delegate has no authority whatsoever to interrupt the Brown Act protected speaker while justly at the podium!

Such behavior violates any reasonable legal interpretation of the Brown Act and is tantamount to heckling! Please review the procedure at the Board of Supervisors meeting where the Los Angeles County Counsel never verbally interrupts any public (Brown Act-protected) speakers at the podium! That is also the case at legislative bodies throughout this County of 10 million residents all of which are governed by the State Brown Act!

If your legally-mandated response  to this Brown Act complaint letter is to allow  a bitter, grudge-carrying City Attorney such as Mr. Dion  O’Connell  to persist in committing these bold Brown Act violations that include nasty verbal harassment, then you are  inviting yourself, Mr. Feuer, to a future face-to-face courthouse confrontation!

Most assuredly, Mr. Feuer, the ultimate outcome of this sad legal affair of yours will be identical to Zuma Dogg’s delight-filled Day in Court which turned into a nightmare for you personally from your standpoint as LA City Attorney!

Didn’t It, Mr. Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer? 

Thank you!

 

John Walsh

6218 Yucca St. # C 

Los Angeles,California 

November 9, 2013

Email: hollywooddems@gmail.com 

Website: hollywoodhighlands.org &

jwalshconfidential.wordpress.com