Part 1: Planning Commissioner Invokes Brown Act in Push for Transparency on Housing Streamlining

Planning Commissioner Lynn Hoopingarner had one of the more powerful moments in recent memory at Thursday night’s Planning Commission meeting.

Council Chambers were packed. Residents had turned out to oppose a streamlining plan that would shift most housing project approvals away from public Planning Commission hearings and into administrative review by the Community Development Director. Speaker after speaker voiced concerns about losing their ability to weigh in on projects before decisions were made.

Hoopingarner was listening. And when it came time for commissioners to deliberate, she responded by reading from the preamble to the Ralph M. Brown Act, California’s open meeting law.

“The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them,” Hoopingarner said. “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 people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”

Then she connected it to the proposal in front of the Planning Commission that night. “Now, just a few weeks later, we’re looking at a zone text amendment that is proposing to effectively strip the public of any awareness or input in any housing constructed in our City,” Hoopingarner said.

It was one of the more memorable moments in a nearly four hour meeting, where commissioners wrestled with how to balance the City’s housing crisis with residents’ right to weigh in on development in their neighborhoods. Vice Chair Stacey Jones later called it “one of the most intellectual conversations, I feel like we’ve had, on a really challenging item.”

The Planning Commission ultimately voted 5-2 to continue the item and direct Staff to come back with an even more aggressive streamlining framework than what City Council had asked for in May. But Hoopingarner was one of the two no votes, along with Chair David Gregoire. She made clear her concerns were not about housing but about the democratic process itself.

Why the Brown Act matters

Hoopingarner explained that every Planning Commissioner and City Council member had received an email from the City Clerk just weeks ago reminding them of their obligations under the Brown Act, a California law that requires public agencies to conduct their business openly.

“Why is the Brown Act so important?” she asked. “Because without it, bribery and corruption were running rampant throughout the state. Some of my colleagues may not have lived in California a number of years ago, when this hit the city of Los Angeles, hard. People went to jail.”

She pointed to Los Angeles’ history of corruption scandals and the creation of neighborhood commissions designed to increase transparency and public oversight. “And here we are proposing to do precisely the opposite, with absolutely no proof as to why developers are not building all the housing we would hope,” she said.

Hoopingarner quoted from a letter submitted by a resident: “Public participation is not an inconvenience, it is a safeguard.”

What the proposal would do

Staff had recommended shifting housing projects under 100 units from Planning Commission review to administrative approval by the Community Development Director. The change would eliminate Design Review and Planning Commission hearings for the vast majority of housing projects in the City. Appeals would go directly to City Council instead of starting at the Planning Commission.

WEHOonline reported on the proposal before the meeting, detailing concerns from residents and neighborhood associations about the loss of public oversight. The City says the goal is to speed up approvals and meet state housing production requirements. Neighborhood meetings would still be required, and residents could submit written comments and appeal decisions. But the venue for public input would shift from in-person hearings at Planning Commission to a more administrative process.

For Hoopingarner, that distinction matters. She said Planning Commission hearings offer commissioners a chance to question developers and residents an opportunity to voice concerns on the record before a decision is made. Moving decisions to an administrative track, she argued, forces neighbors to mount formal appeals just to get the same level of scrutiny.

Challenging the assumptions

Hoopingarner also took issue with the underlying data Staff used to justify the streamlining proposal.

She said Staff blamed the public approval process for the lack of housing development in the City but failed to identify all the factors that could be holding up projects. “The problem is statewide,” she said. “If the problem is the public approval process, then that would seem to be a statewide problem, because the whole state has a problem.”

She pointed to projects on Doheny that have gone into bankruptcy, multiple projects on Ogden that have stalled, and a project near her house that has been under construction for two and a half years and is still at the first floor. “The problem is not exclusively the public process,” she said.

West Hollywood has 15 major commercial construction projects that remain stalled or in flux, most having made little progress toward completion despite receiving City approvals years ago.

Hoopingarner noted that 78% of the approval process takes place before a project even comes to the Planning Commission. She said Staff data includes projects that developers chose to delay for years, putting the onus on the public instead of on developers where it belongs. She also pointed out that the Planning Commission has canceled meetings due to lack of agenda more often than not. “We have an open agenda, more nights than not, and yet, we are supposedly, this public process is the bottleneck,” she said.

“I do not make the finding that the streamlining is supported by the facts,” Hoopingarner said. “And what little benefit might be achieved is at the expense of almost complete removal of public oversight for virtually all proposed construction in West Hollywood.”

Other commissioners weigh in on transparency

Vice Chair Stacey Jones also expressed deep discomfort with eliminating the public process, even as she acknowledged the urgent need for housing.

“I feel like I’m having to choose between the public process that shapes, not just our community, but our nation, and the need that we see for housing yesterday, so urgently, and people’s right to that,” Jones said. “I don’t like having to make that choice.”

Jones said she wanted the Planning Commission to find solutions beyond what Staff had recommended. She said every part of the public process matters and serves as a system of checks and balances to catch problems before they become expensive mistakes.

“What we don’t want is for somebody to get expedited through a process and then all of a sudden, we find out that someone’s transformer is in the wrong place, and it materially changes the project in such a way that the cost and the time savings, are moot anyway,” Jones said.

She added that while she values housing, she does not think cutting out the Planning Commission review will accomplish what the City hopes. “We could approve this and what if we didn’t see a difference? You know, I mean, what would that all be for then?”

Where the commission landed

In the end, Commissioner Andrew Solomon put forward a motion to continue the item with direction for Staff to come back with a framework that goes further than the 100-unit threshold. His motion would eliminate Planning Commission review for any housing project that complies with all objective standards in the zoning code and state housing law, regardless of size.

The motion also asked Staff to explore combining neighborhood meetings with Design Review so that the public and the Design Review Subcommittee would weigh in earlier in the process, when feedback could still shape a project.

The commission voted 5-2 to continue the item with that direction. Hoopingarner and Chair David Gregoire voted no.

Gregoire said he believed Staff’s recommendation reflected what City Council directed back in May when the council voted 4-1 to advance housing streamlining reforms. He acknowledged his discomfort with eliminating public process but said the loss of local discretion under state housing law made the streamlining proposal reasonable.

Hoopingarner disagreed. She said the commission’s job is to deliberate, review, and make informed recommendations, not rubber stamp council directives. “Our obligation is to deliberate, review, and make our informed recommendations,” she said. “And I think the whole point of this process is to refine it.”

What happens next

Staff will return to the Planning Commission with revised language reflecting the commission’s direction. That will include a legal review to ensure the proposed changes comply with state housing law.

The item will be re-agendized and noticed to the public, and the Planning Commission will hold another public hearing before making a formal recommendation to City Council.

City Council will have the final vote.