Beginning Jan. 1, 2019, all local agencies subject to California’s open meeting law known as the Brown Act must comply with new online agenda posting requirements. Adopted by Assembly Bill 2257, Government Code section 54954.2 requires that all local agencies post a prominent, direct link on their homepage to either the agency’s (1) current agenda, or (2) its integrated agenda management platform.
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The direct link must be obvious and cannot be posted within a “contextual” menu (e.g., dropdown menu).
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The agency agenda must be in a format that is:
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retrievable;
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downloadable;
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indexable;
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electronically searchable by common internet search applications; and
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easily reused or distributed—i.e., platform independent, machine readable, and in a format that is free to the public (e.g., portable document files [PDF]).
If an agency chooses to comply by posting a direct link to an integrated agenda management platform (often third-party platforms), it must ensure that the current agenda is the first one available on the platform and that it complies with the open format requirements summarized above.
All agencies subject to the Brown Act that maintain websites should check their homepage and communicate these requirements to their IT departments to ensure compliance prior to Jan. 1, 2019.
