You think the silence buys you time To make things clearer in your mind But I can’t live in the dark …
A reporter called yesterday to discuss that a city manager had held a closed meeting with the city council to discuss the details of a proposed tax increase for the city. This came to light when the city manager sat down with the reporter to bring the reporter up to speed (so to speak) on the issue.
Hmmmm, I say, as I thumb through my brand new sunshine law book from the AG’s office — the one with the sun shining brightly over the Missouri capitol building (there’s a lot of things I could say here about sunshine over the capitol, or bright light shining over activities of the state government, but I’ll refrain….). I wonder just what exception this city council thought it would use to justify this closed meeting with the city manager to discuss a potential ballot issue?
Was it the purchase of real estate? No, obviously not. Was it related to hiring, firing, disciplining or promoting of employees? Doesn’t sound like it. Was it related to preparation for negotiations with employee groups? Hardly. Was it tied to preparing specifications for competitive bids? Hmmm, I don’t think so. And Definitely it was not related to individually identifiable personnel records….
You know, I can’t find a single exception in the law that seems even remotely related, unless somehow the city council was talking about imposing a tax on its citizens to create a fund to use to settle some litigation, so it closed the meeting under Exception 1 in Section 610.021. Can you imagine that tax campaign — we need to tax all you folks out there because we’ve done something wrong and we’re going to have to pay off the other side in this lawsuit? Even yet, if you COULD argue that the funds were going to settle litigation, that hardly seems like good cause to discuss the details of a tax proposal in a closed meeting. You certainly aren’t talking about the lawsuit itself, just that this is one purpose for some of the funds.
And I do remember distinctly that the sunshine law specifically says that there is a duty of the public body to close ONLY that portion of the meeting which is justifiably about the matter under which it was closed. Certainly there would have been many issues discussed in relation to raising this issue of a new tax and the election it would require that had NOTHING to do with potential litigation.
Sounds like another public body trying to hide something from the very people they are elected to serve. Oh, of course, we can’t be telling the public EVERYTHING about their business, can we? Just like that old joke about growing mushrooms, isn’t it?