Cuyahoga County Council fails to keep transparency campaign promise

Six Cuyahoga County Council members-elect are already failing to uphold their campaign pledges for greater government transparency.

These six members-elect met in a closed meeting this past Friday to decide on who will serve as the new council president. This is the same behavior they promised to leave in the past prior to elections according to their own words, which was reported in the Dealer-Cleveland.com Voter Guide questionnaire. You can read them for yourself here.

Cincinnati City County Open Meetings FAIL

The Cincinnati City County held a closed door meeting last week to discuss important spending motions. The process is being described as “ramming through [motions] without any public debate.”

One newspaper is taking matters into its own hands. The Enquirer is suing Mayor Mark Mallory and the City Council, claiming the officials have purposefully circumvented Ohio’s Open Meeting Law to pass allocations for the $20 million a year in casino revenues set to start in 2013.

Apparently, Mayor Mallory has been conducting “round robin”, meeting with small groups of council members to avoid the formal label of “meeting,” which would make the get-togethers public records under the law.

This isn’t the only case of closed meetings in Cincinatti. Other important funding allocations have been decided at closed-door meetings.

More on Ohio open government:
*Ohio Open Meetings Law
*Ohio Open Records Law
*Ohio on Sunshine Review

Transparency isn’t always comfortable

A hotly-contested tax in Mission, MO has some doubting the merits of transparency. After disclosing a new fee that would go towards fixing roads in the town, bloggers and other media officials are unhappy with what has been dubbed “the driveway tax.”

The fee was established after discussions and hearings, and the municipality announced it in a newsletter.* These transparency efforts lead to the negative reaction from bloggers and media outlets.

Often, the knee-jerk reaction in these situations are a mix of self-preservation, defensive posturing by city officials, and an unwillingness to put information in the public spotlight again.

Transparency isn’t always easy, and just like any job people will not always be happy with the end results. But just like a paper that is proof read, exposing government information to the public will lead to an open, honest, and better performing government entity.

I believe this for all levels of government, from cities like Mission to the Federal level.

* I have not been able to find a website for the city. While it’s obvious city officials are trying, a website would be a positive step for easier access to government information.

NJ FOIA lawsuit turns into a criminal investigation

A local watchdog group got more than they expected when they sued Bloomfield township for public records. It was revealed that a lawyer was retained by Councilwoman Patricia Spychala for violations of the Open Meetings Act and more. According the paper:

“Kologi states he was retained to represent Spychala in regards to a lawsuit by several police officers suing for the alleged wrongful selection of Mark Leonard over Christopher Goul for police chief. The correspondence also states he represents Spychala for an alleged violation of the Open Public Meetings Act, after she and others were accused of meeting privately with Leonard prior to his selection.”

Now a criminal investigation has been launched to look into the situation. This is an excellent example of why pursuing public records, even when you have to file a lawsuit, is so important.

I hope you’ll join us for FOIAchat tomorrow, 2-3 EST, where we’ll have Kenneth Bunting from the National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC) speaking with us about FOIA litigation and the Knight FOI Fund, which helps groups fund them.

Ordinance to limit open meetings act fails

Last Friday on #FOIAchat, our live Twitter chat on Freedom of Information Act issues, the Dover, New Jersey open meetings ordinance came up. The ordinance required citizens to turn over videos of open meetings. Why? As the Mayor stated, “With today’s technology, people can edit, tape, doctor or alter the real intent of what’s discussed.”

(It is true that video tapes can be altered. So can basically anything else that’s recordable.)

But last Tuesday the Board of Alderman rejected the ordinance.

Alderman Pat Donofrio, the only member to oppose the ordinance at its introduction two weeks ago, was pleased with the proposed law’s defeat. Not only did he see the law as unnecessary, by more seriously, Donofrio also saw it as a “reactive response” by Mayor James Dodd to restrict recording the meetings by certain residents.

Edward Correa, founder of the group Dover Democrats For Change, said it was nonsensical to expect citizens to hand over recordings. It was also harmful to open government. “There were too many regulations that would have discouraged people from taping the meetings.”

Luckily, this ordinance was defeated. But governments and officials keep trying to defeat open records and open meetings laws. In Texaschallenge the constitutionality of the Texas Open Meetings Act. Let’s stay informed and make sure attempts like these to limit our information don’t make it very far, and that we have officials like Alderman Donofrio looking out for transparency government.

South Carolina officials don’t know open meetings law exists

Three current and one former commissioner of a South Carolina fire district face charges they violated the South Carolina Open Meetings Law by barring a reporter from a meeting. A judge signed their summonses this week. Hometown News reporter Jay King says officials threw him out of a June meeting and ignored his explanation of the Freedom of Information Act. The Holly Springs Fire and Rescue commissioners are set to appear in court in late September.

This is the first time a criminal case has has been brought against South Carolina public officials over the 1974 statute.

Chairman Ryan Phillips acknowledges the board didn’t follow the law but says it didn’t know the law at the time. This actually seems sincere. Other instances of citizens and reporters being kicked out of public meetings make it clear that the guilty parties either didn’t care about the law, or didn’t consider whether the law exists. They simply knew they could use their authority to box-out inconvenient watchdogs and ensure secrecy. However, the officials seem to sincerely not have known.

This may even be a worse offense. But who is to blame?

Perhaps the attorney general. Generally speaking, it is often the attorney general that is the Freedom of Information officer in states.

South Carolina, however, doesn’t need a scapegoat. It needs a solution. Local officials in every state need to be educated as to what their Freedom of Information Acts require of them, both the public records and public meetings portions. This is an easily justifiable use of taxpayer money.

Often we focus on citizen education in order to hold government accountable. But the government has to do its part, too.

Local zoning board violates Pennsylvania Sunshine Act

Lower Merion Township chairman broke the law yesterday when he ordered Channel 6 News cameras to not film a public meeting. In the middle of a meeting disputing changes to St. Joseph’s baseball field, the chairman of the zoning board told reporters they could stay, but they had to turn their cameras off.

This was a direct violation of the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act.

“It’s a public hearing but we don’t do that. We don’t want people to do that. It causes a zoo. We don’t want it to become a zoo,” said Zoning Board Chairman Kenneth Aaron, Esq.

When the journalists refused to turn off their cameras, the chairman called the police. The police sided with the chairman and ordered the cameras to be turned off. The journalists relented, turning off their cameras, but at the cost of government transparency.

Citizens work wonders with information on their side… when they aren’t being kicked out of public meetings

What can citizens do once they have government information?

In Bell, California, three senior city officials were making lavish salaries. The Chief Administrative Officer, Robert Rizzo, was making $787,637 for running the city of less than 40,000. When citizens found out, they were rightfully outraged and their anger translated into the resignation of those three officials. Now activist groups are calling for the resignation of 4 out of the 5 city council members. These positions are part time, but the council members are making more close to $100,000.

“It’s showing that the residents are ready and willing to fix this problem and they’re going to move forward until they get justice and get a government that works for them,” said Christina Garcia, the head of one of the activist groups involved in organizing upset citiznes. The group is calling for open records and an exhaustive audit of the city’s finances. Coincidentally, the city gets an “F” on transparency using our 10 point transparency checklist.

Citizens armed with information are fully-vested with the power they need in order to keep their government accountable. But what about those instances where information is kept from citizens?

Mike Gatto, California State Assemblyman, avoids cameras and answering question. But that’s putting it lightly. One man representing the assemblyman who can only kindly be described as “overly aggressive” in his tactics kicked a journalist out from a public meeting in a public library. Less than 30 people attended the meeting. And that’s how many would find out what really happened in that meeting,

Police at the scene threatened to arrest the journalist if he didn’t leave. Of course, the journalist was the last person that needed to be threatened by police. Perhaps the police should have threatened the assemblyman and compelled him to acknowledge California’s open meetings law.

Several things I’ve learned through #FOIAchat, our weekly Twitter conference on Freedom of Information issues, come to mind. First, video cameras will bring out the worst in public officials and their staff as far as secrecy goes. But few will object to, or notice, a voice recorder. For many reasons, video is far superior to just voice recording, but it is better than nothing. Second, the fact that Mike Gatto is acting like a diva is a story in itself. If this were a special on VH1, it would be understandable why he wouldn’t want unexpected cameras. But as an elected official, paid by taxpayer money, he has no right to exclude journalists (and thereby exclude his constituents) from public meetings. This is a story on it’s own right, and had he let the journalist in the meeting, the journalist probably wouldn’t have found anything as worthy of reporting as Gatto’s power trip.

Lastly, people are becoming a part of government accountability, and officials should embrace this and learn to work with citizens instead of trying to push us out. We’ve talked about the benefits to governments and citizens alike to letting cameras into open meetings. Officials can benefit by having justifications for their decisions available and they can also see a decrease in Freedom of Information Act requests. The benefits to citizens are obvious.

It won’t work to keep us out, we’re already in. Officials need to get with the times and include us in the conversation, or suffer the wrath of informed citizens.