When the Blue Lake City Council voted in a May 13 closed session to ratify a severance agreement with its longtime City Manager Amanda “Mandy” Mager, it violated California government transparency laws for the second time in a week.
The council met that day with two items on the closed session agenda — the possible appointment of an acting city manager and a conference with legal counsel due to the city’s exposure to litigation — and emerged 45 minutes later. Ryan Plotz, an attorney with the Eureka-based Mitchell Law Firm, which contracts with the city, then reported out of the closed session that the council had voted 4-0, with Councilmember Christopher Firor absent, to take action “that finalizes an separation agreement with Amanda Mager.”
The problem is that the closed session agenda did not include anything about Mager, the separation agreement or a potential “separation” with a city employee, so someone reading the agenda before the meeting would have had no idea the separation agreement was under consideration, and therefore the public was denied its legally protected opportunity to address the council about it prior to its discussion and vote. California open meeting laws, known collectively as the Ralph M. Brown Act, are designed to ensure a level of transparency to government meetings and maintain avenues for public participation.
“They are required to put items that they will be discussing in closed session on the agenda,” explains David Snyder, executive director of the nonprofit First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the people’s right to know. “Failing to put a closed session discussion on the agenda at all is definitely a problem under the Brown Act. The public is entitled to know, at least in broad strokes, what it is legislative bodies plan to discuss in closed session.”
Shaila Nathu, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, agrees generally, saying at a minimum the discussion and vote on the separation agreement should have been agendized as the possible dismissal, discipline or release of a public employee.
“A separation agreement does not equal anticipated litigation,” she says, noting there must be an actual threat of a lawsuit to justify that closed-session discussion. “We don’t know whether there was or was not [with Mager’s separation]. But either way, you can’t just make those two things equivalent.”
But Nathu says the city’s Brown Act compliance issues may not stop there, saying if this agreement was finished prior to the meeting — as there’s reason to believe it was — and all that was up for discussion and a vote was final approval, that doesn’t meet legal requirements for a closed session.
“If it is just ratification of the separation agreement, there’s no closed session exemption that allows for that, and thus it should have appeared as an open session agenda item,” Nathu says, adding that would also mean the agreement should have been made available to the public and the council along with the other agenda packet materials prior to the meeting to allow for its full review and public input.
The separation agreement provides that Mager will receive four months’ salary — $30,000 — and health benefits. In return, she agreed not to pursue any legal action against the city and the city admits no liability. The agreement also stipulates the city would release the following statement, which was emailed out May 8 at 12:15 p.m.:
“City Manager Amanda ‘Mandy’ Mager and the city council have mutually decided to end their relationship effective May 9, 2025. The city council expresses sincere gratitude to Mandy for her nine-plus years of dedicated service to and leadership of the city of Blue Lake, and the council wishes her the best in all her future endeavors. An interim city manager will be appointed while the city conducts a comprehensive recruitment process.”
It remains unclear exactly when the council decided to part ways with Mager generally or to enter into this agreement, which Mager signed May 8.
The council met May 6 and discussed Mager’s employee performance in closed session, as it had done five times previously since the start of the year, but reported having taken no action. Nonetheless, rumors immediately began circulating in Blue Lake that Mager had been fired that night, persisting until the statement was released May 8.
It appears the council either decided to part ways with Mager during the May 6 closed session — which Snyder and Nathu say would constitute an action that should have been reported out of closed session, and all would have strayed from the bounds the agendized employee performance review discussion — or between then and when the statement was issued May 8. But if the decision was made after the May 6 meeting, it didn’t happen at an official meeting and therefore would also run afoul of open meeting laws, which require that official council actions be made during official meetings.
Nathu says it’s impossible to pinpoint when the violation took place because the public does not know what was discussed when the council closed its doors and is left to piece together what happened.
“This is a little bit tricky — that’s the problem with closed sessions, there’s an informational asymmetry,” she says. “We don’t know what went down on May 6, and there’s no real way to verify whether they had something they needed to report out.”
But by the city’s own statement, the council made the decision to part ways with Mager at some point prior 12:15 p.m. on May 8, meaning if it didn’t violate the Brown Act by failing to report it May 6, it violated the Brown Act by making the decision some other way, some other time, and without an official record.
“The city council would have had to, on its end, make a decision to dismiss this person, and that would have had to have taken place in a closed session with an action reported out [to be compliant] under the Brown Act,” Nathu says.
Snyder says it’s also important to remember the Brown Act’s language is legally required to be interpreted broadly in favor of public access. He notes that even if the council merely came to some kind of consensus without an official vote, it should part ways with Mager and directed Plotz to draft a separation agreement, that should have constituted a reportable action.
“The mechanism by which the council made a decision — whether a straw poll or a wink and a nod — doesn’t matter,” he says. “If there was a decision made, in whatever form that decision is made, that’s an action that needs to be reported out.”
Mayor John Sawatzky declined to answer Journal questions about when the council decided to part ways with Mager and who on the council made that decision, saying it was a personnel matter and Plotz had told him the council is “not allowed to comment.” Plotz, for his part, responded similarly to the same questions by saying it’s a personnel matter and he cannot comment further. Other members of the Blue Lake City Council have not responded to Journal inquiries.
Snyder says he’s unaware of anything in the law allowing the city to withhold the basic information of who made the decision to sever ties with Mager and when.
“Withholding the facts of the decisions to dismiss — who decided it and when — I don’t know of any legal basis to do that,” Snyder says. “They’ve already disclosed that the decision was made. And they’ve already disclosed a vote as to the final severance agreement. So why would it be improper to say exactly when the decision was made and who exactly made the decision? I don’t see what the legal basis is for that contention. … Why is the specific date of the decision and the people involved in that decision confidential? I don’t understand.”
The Brown Act outlines a process for citizens to address violations of its provisions, either with the legislative body directly or the superior court with jurisdiction, by either preventing their recurrence, stopping actions in progress or voiding past actions. Section VII of the First Amendment Coalition’s Brown Act Primer outlines the necessary steps.
This article appears in ‘Fire Teaches Us Many Lessons’.
