A ruling Monday from a Fresno County Superior Court judge found the city of Fresno’s budget process for five years violated state law by hiding the city’s financial decisions behind closed doors.

From 2018 to 2023, Fresno City Council relied on a closed-door subcommittee to hash out some of the city’s most important fiscal decisions.

While the city argued that the subcommittee is integral to the city’s strong mayor structure and that it’s not subject to the Brown Act, Judge Robert Whalen disagreed.

“It is subject to the Brown Act and must post its agenda, be open to the public and prepare minutes of its meeting,” Whalen wrote in his Monday ruling. “The council met none of these requirements.”

The lawsuit from the First Amendment Coalition and the Americans for Civil Liberties Union comes after a news report from Fresnoland about the committee.

‘We Wanted to Settle This Out of Court’: Loy

David Loy, legal director for the coalition said that the city’s use of a secretive subcommittee to make financial decisions year-after-year and its attempt to hide behind a technicality strikes against the core of California’s transparency laws.

And while Whalen acknowledged the city has been in compliance since 2024, not issuing an injunction against the city, Loy said the city could have avoided the lawsuit — including time and likely attorney’s fees — by making a commitment to the coalition that it would no longer use the subcommittee.

“If the city had just done that, we would never have had to file this case. We would not have spent two-and-half years in court,” Loy said. “The city would not have had to pay its lawyers and we would not be in a position to seek to recover our fees. We tried to get this settled out of court. We wanted to settle this out of court.”

Fresno Only Strong-Mayor City With Secret Budget Subcommittee

Under Fresno’s strong mayor system, it’s the chief executive who creates the budget. Then councilmembers hone in on the details and work from there. Mayors meet with councilmembers individually or in small groups to discuss what the upcoming year’s spending priorities should be.

In 2018, then-councilmembers Esmeralda Soria, Luis Chavez, and Paul Caprioglio made the process more official by creating the subcommittee that for five years met without posting an agenda, taking public comment, or allowing outside attendance.

The city justified that decision by saying the committee was an advisory committee whose mission changed regularly, despite it being approved yearly with the same purview. Whalen in his ruling rejected that argument.

The subcommittee discussed multi-million dollar proposals such as how to spend COVID money. In 2024, the committee made more than 75 changes totaling $30 million, First Amendment Coalition lawyers argued.

At one point in 2023, Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer said “a lot of sausage was being made in the back room.”

Despite a handful of California cities using the strong mayor system, including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and Oakland, Loy said Fresno is the only city he knows of that hid the decision-making process behind closed doors.

“Every one of them has standing city council committees and even though they’re strong mayor cities; those standing committees, those city councils, are covered by the Brown Act,” Loy said.

After receiving a cease-and-desist letter in 2023, the city stopped using the subcommittee.

City Should Be Fixing Potholes not Fighting ‘Nonsense Lawsuits’: Karbassi

Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz said the city may appeal Whalen’s ruling that for the five years the budget process violated state law.

He and Fresno City Councilmember Mike Karbassi in a joint statement called the ruling a “win” because Whalen did not force an injunction and did not issue any penalties.

The court will determine attorney’s fees at a future hearing.

“The city of Fresno maintains one of the most transparent budget processes in the state of California,” Janz said. “It is unfortunate that some chose to ignore the difference between strong-mayor forms of government and council-manager types of government thereby creating a false narrative of non-transparency and wrongdoing.”

Karbassi said the city should focus on more pressing issues than dealing with lawsuits.

“Instead of fixing potholes and hiring more firefighters to keep Fresno’s working families safe, the city has had to waste precious taxpayer dollars defending a nonsense lawsuit,” Karbassi said. “All this because disinformation agents don’t understand the fundamental difference between a strong mayor vs. council form of government.”

Loy disagreed with the city calling the ruling a win.

“It’s no credit to stop doing something illegal when you get caught,” Loy said. “That’s the minimum the law expects.”