Santa Ana officials are backing away from restricting where photojournalists and residents can take pictures and videos during public meetings at city hall following pushback from the Voice of OC, journalist organizations and a prominent First Amendment rights group.

The pushback came after city officials quietly implemented a policy without a public vote in 2023 restricting where journalists and members of the public can take pictures and film city council deliberations. 

Following the criticism, city officials directed staff ahead of the election last year to come back with changes to the media policy to make it more flexible depending on how crowded the council chambers are during meetings.

[Read: Will Santa Ana Officials Minimize Photographer Restrictions at City Hall?]

On Tuesday, officials voted unanimously to amend their rules and procedures for council meetings to include new guidelines on filming, photographing and recording public meetings – where officials create policy and laws that impact the quality of life of residents.

“This is the official component,” said City Manager Alvaro Nuñez at Tuesday’s meeting. “This is the formal policy that we’ll be following.”

The new guidelines also reaffirm that under the state’s open meeting law – the Brown Act – anyone has the right to film or record a public meeting as long as there is no persistent disruption to the meeting.

They also clarify that council members will determine if there is a “persistent disruption” to the meeting through a majority vote.

The guidelines no longer ask journalists to film and photograph from designated areas or while seated in the audience. 

They still prohibit people from blocking aisles, entrances and exits of the council meeting chambers.

But now it is regardless of whether they’re filming or photographing a public meeting or not – a change requested to Tuesday’s proposal by Councilwoman Jessie Lopez.

“When you’re adding ‘while recording of photography and or filming the city council meeting’ is unnecessary. It actually kind of brings us back to the original issue of, again, having something that is targeting media and I’m not in support of that,” she said.

Lopez also questioned if a policy was even necessary to reaffirm state law.

Councilman Phil Bacerra said the policy will help future council members navigate similar issues when it comes to persistent disruptions of meetings.

“I want to make sure that it’s as simple and easy to read and understand,” he said.

Lights, Camera, Action: Filming a Santa Ana City Council Meeting

Credit: Carlos Conde

Prior to Tuesday’s meeting, the city’s media policy called on members of the public and the press to film, photograph or record city council meetings while seated, not standing.

It also called on people using tripods and “large video cameras” to film the public meetings from designated areas marked off with red tape.

The policy also banned attendees from filming and photographing meetings in the aisles adjacent to walls or in front of doorways for safety and access reasons and allowed any elected official to stop someone from filming the meeting if they deemed it to be a disruption.

It remains unclear how the media policy first came about in Santa Ana.

Councilman Benjamin Vazquez previously told the Voice of OC that City Attorney Sonia Carvalho said the policy came from her office.

City staff denied a Voice of OC public records request last year for all electronic communications between Carvalho and city council members as well as between Carvalho and city spokesman Paul Eakins regarding the media policy.

“The disclosure of such responsive records is exempted or prohibited pursuant to federal or state law, including, but not limited to, the provisions of the Evidence Code relating to privilege as such records contained information subject to the Attorney-Client privilege regarding communications and work product,” read’s the city denial for the records.

What Are Santa Ana Politicians Trying to Hide?

City Hall in Santa Ana.

The media policy in Santa Ana sparked criticism from a variety of organizations and local newsrooms since it first surfaced at the end of 2023. 

Voice of OC’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Norberto Santana Jr. criticized the city’s media policy in a column last year implementing a policy to protest the photo restrictions by not sending photojournalists to cover official meetings, instead publishing a cartoon to accompany news coverage of council meetings. 

[Read: Santana: Politicians in Santa Ana Don’t Want Residents To See Them Up Close]

Todd Harmonson, a Senior Editor at the Orange County Register, also sent an email to city officials last year asking them to revise the policy dictating where journalists can capture photos of public meetings.

“The city’s policy might be intended to help the public in some way, but it actually hurts the citizens of Santa Ana by limiting and even dictating how stories that are important to them are told,” reads Harmonson’s Sept. 23, 2024 letter.

“The current media policy leaves the impression that the City Council has something to hide.”

News outlets weren’t the only ones to raise concerns about the policy.

California’s First Amendment Coalition, the Orange County Press Club, and other journalism groups also condemned Santa Ana’s media policy in a December 2023 letter – arguing that it violates the state’s chief open meeting law, the Brown Act.

In response to the December 2023 letter, Lopez, Vazquez and Councilman Johnathan Hernandez posted on Instagram stating the media policy was crafted without “proper legal vetting” and encouraged the filming and recording of public meetings.

Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.