County Supervisors Redistricted Behind Closed Doors After Hiring Hopkins' Former Campaign Manager to Drive Redistricting Studies
The County of Sonoma Hired Supervisor Lynda Hopkins' former Campaign Manager, Herman G. Hernandez to lead community engagement for redistricting which led to a Brown Act violation
The Board of Supervisors established the Sonoma County Advisory Redistricting Commission (ARC) at their February 23, 2021 meeting to advise and assist the Board with redrawing supervisorial district boundaries. The ARC has 19 members, comprised of two appointees per district and nine at-large members.
On August 23, 2021, Deputy County Administrator Christel Querijero presented Herman G. Hernandez, Hernandez Consulting, with a contract to provide Community Engagement Services to assist the County in seeking, collecting, consolidating, and summarizing input from underrepresented communities on the County’s Redistricting effort.
The term of the Agreement was set from August 31, 2021 to December 31, 2021 unless terminated earlier.
Simultaneously, Mr. Hernandez served as a Trustee to the Sonoma County Office of Education (SCOE). Additional clients for Hernandez Consulting included the Elsie Allen High School Foundation and 421 Group per his 2021 Form 700.
Mr. Hernandez served as the 2016 Campaign Manager for Supervisor Lynda Hopkins and 2013-2014 Field Director for Senator Mike McGuire.
As a SCOE trustee, Mr. Hernandez failed to report financial interests to the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) for ten years. I reported his omissions to the FPPC resulting in a stipulation, decision and order accompanied by a $1,600 fine. He removed several positions from his LinkedIn profile following the final order. I am not sure why, but I took screenshots of his original profile.
On April 20, 2021, the County Administrator’s Office presented the Appointment of Members to the 2021 Advisory Redistricting Commission for approval.
The summary report included the following excerpt:
Staff released a Request for Proposal (RFP) for redistricting services on February 11, 2021. Staff are currently conducting related due diligence and expect to make a determination on the winning firm over the next few weeks. As immediate first steps, the consultant will develop a redistricting timeline and community outreach plan based on redistricting best practices, and begin providing training to the ARC members, likely in May. Throughout the County’s redistricting process, the consultant will provide ARC training and support; preparation and facilitation of all required public hearings; provision and facilitation of the mapping tool; engagement and communications support as needed; and assurance that the County is adhering to the requirements outlined in the California Elections Code (sections 21500-21509) and the principles outlined in the California Fair Maps Act.
The final Commission roster was as follows:
On March 11, 2022, Bay City News Foundation published an article titled - Brown Act Violated By Sonoma County Supervisors, County Staff: DA.
SONOMA COUNTY, CA — Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch's office has found that the county Board of Supervisors and county staff violated the state's Brown Act — also known as the open meetings law — when they failed to notify the public about an item discussed in closed session.
Prosecutors also allege that the supervisors held a "hub spoke" serial meeting when county staff summarized comments made by supervisors and distributed the document to the body outside of a scheduled meeting.
The district attorney was asked to investigate the alleged violations after Sonoma County Counsel Robert Pittman brought them to her attention last December, she said in a letter dated Wednesday. The allegations stem from the county's current redistricting process.
In the letter, Ravitch says that a threat of litigation that was discussed in a closed-session meeting on Nov. 19 should have been put on the public agenda packet, "as required in order to invoke this basis for a closed session."
Members of bodies such as a board of supervisors are permitted to speak about pending litigation or "threats of" litigation in closed session away from the public eye, but they are required to notify the public that they will be occurring.
Ravitch makes note of board chair Lynda Hopkins being the person that received the litigation threats, adding "but we believe that she should have memorialized them in writing," she wrote.
"Either way, documentation of the threats should have been made public," Ravitch said.
The District Attorney's Office has asked the county to do so retroactively.
Regarding an alleged serial meeting, Ravich claims that a hub-spoke serial meeting took place between Nov. 16 and a Nov. 29 workshop. The term "hub-spoke" refers to a supervisor or council member speaking with one member of the body outside of a meeting and then talking to another member about that conversation.
Such communications are restricted by the Brown Act. Ravich claims in her letter that her office found that county staff communicated with each member of the Board of Supervisors to get input on the county's redistricting maps and other pertinent documents, then summarized their findings into one document that was shared with the board prior to the workshop.
Ravitch notes that the shared document was labeled an "attorney-client privileged communication," "but does not appear to have been prepared by an attorney or contain legal advice."
Ultimately, the district attorney found that none of the violations had an effect on the county's redistricting process, but she recommended that everyone brush up on the Brown Act.
"We believe the Board and staff who work directly with the Board should be provided with updated Brown Act training, taking into account the issues raised by this review and the public concerns raised," she wrote.
Ravitch said the file on this investigation will be closed once the parties undergo the training.
Ravitch makes mention in her letter of another Brown Act violation regarding the redistricting that came to her attention on Monday, though she gives no details outside of saying that her office is investigating it.
Sonoma County Administrator Sheryl Bratton responded to the Brown Act violations.
"Public transparency is a top priority to the Board of Supervisors as well as all County staff, and, as part of that, we are committed to abiding by all aspects of the Brown Act in how we conduct county business," she wrote in an email.
"We appreciate the District Attorney's thorough review of what happened in November and accept the findings of this investigation. We are already working to schedule the additional Brown Act training that has been required and are posting materials that the DA's Office has indicated should be added to the redistricting website. It's important to note that the District Attorney concluded that there was "no prejudice" in how the County conducted its business in these instances and, therefore, no additional correction is required," Bratton wrote.
On March 12, 2022, The Press Democrat published the following article:
In two letters last week, Sonoma County District Attorney Jill Ravitch wrote that county supervisors violated California’s Brown Act, a landmark law passed in 1953 to guarantee the public access to government meetings.
Ravitch found that members of the board had violated the law twice as they engaged in the critical act of redrawing the county’s political districts, and she recommended that they receive training on the act, which was intended to ensure that citizens can hold their elected officials accountable.
“The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know,” the Brown Act states. It sets the rules of public meetings for a wide array of government bodies, including city councils, school boards and the governing bodies of local agencies such as economic development committees or environmental districts.
The law does not apply to the courts, nor does it apply to the state legislature or state agencies, where meeting access is dictated by different laws. A district attorney choosing to investigate a Brown Act violation is “pretty rare,” said David Snyder, a lawyer and former journalist who directs the California First Amendment Coalition.
“Some DAs are fairly active on this front and others I don’t think do it at all,” he said, “it doesn’t happen as often as one would hope.” “It’s good to see because often the only way the Brown Act is enforced or brought to bear is by private citizens who have to take the time and resources to do it,” he added. The Brown Act’s complexity often leads to problems in implementation, according to a primer maintained online by the FAC. And with its bounds often tested by public officials, the act requires zealous supervision as much as it guarantees zealous supervision of public bodies.
“The Brown Act presumes that all meetings are public and the instances where a legislative body can act or discuss things outside the public view are very few and they’re very narrowly defined,” Snyder said. “It’s of crucial importance that legislative bodies adhere to those rules. Because otherwise they could be conducting the public business in secret and that’s just anathema to the way a democracy functions and it’s anathema to public scrutiny and accountability.”
In the first violation, according to the DA’s office, the Board of Supervisors did not properly notify the public about its reasons for entering a closed-door meeting Nov. 19, where discussion centered on potential legal threats over the county’s redistricting. That confidential meeting factored in a sharp rift between supervisors Lynda Hopkins and Chris Coursey over redistricting.
Their dispute colored subsequent weeks of public debate late last year over the new map redrawing boundaries for the five supervisorial districts. Ravitch did not rule whether the litigation threat itself was sufficient justification for a closed-door meeting, but called it “debatable” in one of her messages. Raising the specter of lawsuits is “one of the more commonly abused” justifications for blocking the public from government meetings, Snyder said, as some bodies interpret the law to say that “anything that could somehow result in litigation can be discussed behind closed doors.”
Though the DA didn’t rule on the legitimacy of the threat of a lawsuit in this case, she reprimanded the board for not making its documentation of the threat public. The next time supervisors raise the threat of a lawsuit, Sonoma County residents should be able to judge the threat’s validity themselves, and do so before supervisors retreat behind closed doors, Snyder said. “It offers at least a small opportunity for the public to check and inquire whether this is really valid,” he said.
The second violation occurred when staff compiled a memo summarizing supervisors’ comments on redistricting and shared it with all five board members outside of a public meeting. The district attorney’s investigation concluded that the sharing of that memo was “inappropriate” and a type of “serial meeting” that is forbidden by the Brown Act.
A serial meeting is a series of communications between a voting majority of a governing body — which would be at least three supervisors in this case — that should have been held in public. In this case, the violation came through a memo that summarized supervisors’ comments on the redistricting maps.
The memo went to all five supervisors, meaning it should have been discussed publicly. “That’s one classic way a serial violation happens is you get staff acting as an intermediary between various members and then that conversation is shared with a quorum of the body,” Snyder said.
Mr. Hernandez was well acquainted with several of the ARC Members through his consulting firm and position as a SCOE Trustee.
The SRCS District previously utilized Mr. Hernandez as a consultant for the Made in Santa Rosa Education Foundation which services Santa Rosa City Schools. Per Hernandez’s 2020 SEI, he earned at least $10k through the Foundation.
Chair Ed Sheffield simultaneously served as a Santa Rosa City Schools (SRCS) Trustee and as a Member of the Sonoma County Committee on School District Organization.
Stephanie Manieri served as an SRCS Trustee and Executive Director of Latino Service Providers, a frequent partner of Los Cien.
What outreach is done by County staff to solicit applicants for ARC and other bodies which represent the taxpayers through appointed positions? How come the same individuals are continually recycled to represent the ‘marginalized’ communities via local agencies? These folks appear to be indoctrinating their communities and taking advantage of them rather than genuinely serving. Do County Supervisors collude with their network of friends, family and colleagues to infiltrate the decision making process on behalf of constituents?
‘But the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.’ -Mark 4:19
Without amazing citizens like you doing the hard work digging into this and looking into these things we wouldn’t know about them, which is clearly what this county has a hard time understanding… they can’t keep sweeping their conflicts of interest under the rug and benefit from the tax payers’ dollars by not following the rules.