City Attorney to City Council: Zip It

The city attorney is asking Lake Forest City Council members to limit, and in some cases cease, talking about city business with merchants and other interested parties outside of formal meetings.

Private conversations might be influencing officials' votes, according to an item submitted by attorney Scott Smith for the council's Tuesday evening meeting. 

Smith wants council members to either stop discussing upcoming meeting topics altogether, or come up with an alternative policy under which such communications would be formally disclosed.

"The only way to provide 100 percent assurance of these due process protections is for Council members not to meet with appellants, or for that matter, discuss the substance of a hearing with anyone—including staff—outside the hearing process," states the report. "Because this approach is the only way to completely avoid due process concerns, it has consistently been the advice of the City Attorney’s office that the Council adhere to that standard."

The council has no city-specific policy about communications outside of meetings, aside from following California's open-meeting law. Smith's report urges the council to "limit its consideration of facts to those presented at [official city hearings], where all sides have the opportunity to hear and rebut testimony given by all participants."

As recently as Oct. 6, council members were battling over the appropriateness of using private conversations as a basis for decisions.

At that session, 

The council will discuss the city attorney's proposal at its Tuesday evening meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. in .