Have you ever filed a land use appeal in the City of Los Angeles and felt that the City Council did not really listen to or perhaps even understand the issues you were raising in the public interest? Recent litigation commenced against the City is uncovering facts about a secret meeting that occurs prior to the bimonthly meetings of the City Council’s powerful Planning and Land Use Management (“PLUM”) Committee. It is called the “pre-PLUM Meeting.” The outcome of this secret pre-PLUM meeting, and actions of City employees around it, may constitute a classic hub-and-spoke communications process outside the hearing room for constitutionally required land use appeals. These communications appear to be occurring outside the public meeting where those deliberations are required by law to be witnessed by the public. Why do we say “may constitute”? Right now, the City is fighting ruthlessly to avoid releasing to us documents that might show this process. So at this point, we cannot definitively say the City’s “pre-PLUM process” routinely facilitates a constitutionally unfair process, but our litigation is trying to obtain those documents so that we can assess whether it is in fact a violation of the constitution.