The following is a transcript of a rare unrehearsed conversation that happened at the City Council meeting, (yes those still happen occasionally.)
1. In any case where the participant stuttered or stammered, I have inserted a "..." to make the words they were speaking more readable.
2. In any case where the participant was cut off by another I have inserted a "-" at the place in their sentence where the other person began to speak.
3. Anything between brackets, "[ ]" has been added by the writer and are inserted for clarity.
4. This transcript was made from a video recording of the Sac City Council meeting that took place on November 23, 2009.
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
BILL BRENNY : You know, I'd like to make ...a comment ...Curtis [BLOES] brought up the fact that, you know from some of our bullets, it seems like we're meeting behind the scenes or in advance. And when we took our training for become City Council members we were all well schooled, you know in the open meetings laws and what we could and couldn't do by an attorney from the Iowa League of Cities and I will say we, to my knowledge, follow that to a "T."
...in fact this morning I ...just met with Adam [LEDFORD] and he was coming out and I noticed two other City Council members happened to be meeting with one of the utility people and I said ...I opened up the door and they were meeting in here [MAKES GESTURE INDICATING CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS] and I opened up the door and I said, "I can't come in, I'd be in violation of the open meetings law." and Jim Frederick said, "I'll leave so you can come in."
JIM FREDERICK : We were done with what we were talking about anyway.
BILL BRENNY : ...and you know, so ... and I'm not trying to ...attack Curtis [BLOES] or anything. I just want the public to know that we have really bent over backwards to be open-
BRIAN MUSKA : that we're conscious about it.
BILL BRENNY : That we're conscious about it and -
ADAM LEDFORD : And to be all honest, technically if you're not talking about City business, if you would have come in just to socialize, you could ... that one of the-
BRIAN MUSKA : Well one could interpret that we are, and that's what we're faced with out in the community and ...we are sympathetic to that, we understand that and we don't conduct business- Although many may be under the impression but we're human as well and we can have a civil conversation out in the public other than City business.
BILL BRENNY : You know, and I would attribute it to Adam [LEDFORD] kind of keeping us up to speed what's going on. He leaves Monday aside for the city council people to come in and visit with him so ... we kind of are up to speed what's going on so it might seem like it's a foregone conclusion when in fact it's really, "we've done our homework before hand." We have summaries going in and ...we were told at the pre-training meetings, "be sure and come to meetings prepared." So I make sure I go through all the things that we're being addressed on. I'm familiar with, you know I trust the people that work on the respective committees, that they're bringing good information to us and you can't serve on everything, so I trust the recommendations of the other ...council members until I have reason to believe otherwise and I haven't one, so ...it may seem like we're in concurrence on a lot of things and that's because I think we work real well together so.
...and I'm not attacking you Curtis [BLOES], I'm just saying, i think we've done a very good job in this respect and I would challenge anyone to find anything to the contrary.
END TRANSCRIPT
Mr. Brenny suggested that the City Administrator leaves Mondays open for City Councilmen to come in and chat ... to be brought up to speed as it were. By his own testimony systematic communications are occurring which involve members of the Sac City Council acquiring substantive information for an upcoming meeting and engaging in debate, discussion, or any other aspect of the deliberative process either among themselves or with the City Administrator or other staff. I am able to make this charge because regularly, there is literally not a single word said before an issue goes to vote. Every single meeting contains at least one instance, if not several examples of, the City Councilmen voting on something on which they have not deliberated after the meeting has started. It’s not like it’s a big secret. It’s not like they are trying to hide the fact that they have already discussed some of these issue in some other forum. They just vote whatever was decided upon earlier, and then move on.
According to Attorney General Tom Miller’s website, http://www.iowa.gov/government/ag/sunshine_advisories/2002/november.html “Discussions of policy issues -- even when no votes are taken -- are covered by the Open Meetings Law." Mr. Brenny has freely admitted that the councilmen are coming in on Mondays to be brought, "up to speed." or in other words, having conversations about policy issues. He, in fact, said that he witnessed two other city council members engaging in discussion regarding utilities, (a topic that was then not addressed during the city council meeting that evening. No doubt, they were having a behind the scenes meeting about the cancelled item on the agenda for that evening which had (surprise) to do with utilities.)
The Sac City Council passed a whole list of other items with no discussion. Were those items discussed earlier that day? Because there was zero discussion during the meeting, the only conclusion that someone with the ability to work out 2+2 can come to is "Yes."
Since these communications occur in private without announcement, a large part of the process by which members reach their decisions are occurring outside of the public eye. Under the current circumstances, the public is only able to witness the shorthand version of the deliberative process, which because there is no discussion, must be taking place outside of the bounds of the open meetings in which these discussions are supposed to take place.
There really isn’t a question about this, “Monday meetings" in spirit are exactly the same as the infamous "Thursday meetings" of five years ago. The only difference is that this set of council members has agreed not to meet at the same time. The City Administrator, through his briefings acts as the meeting moderator and all of the information can be passed through him, instead of from mouth to ear. The Monday meetings deliberately get the council members out of having to publically discuss anything they may find uncomfortable.
…And one can understand why they may prefer not to discuss everything in open meeting. For instance, in early 2009 they approved reimbursement for a pair of panties for a city employee as part of her regular compensation package. Later in the year, they reimbursed a City Council member over $400 to drive their own vehicle to Dubuque to attend training. Did he publicly share to what end he would apply the training? Do you really think the answer might be yes?
ALL of the Sac City Councilmen at one point or another were paid hundreds of dollars and put up in reasonably nice hotels to be on vacation. (If asked, they’ll undoubtedly insist that it was training. I’ve attended a few seminars myself and know better than to believe that line.) Like I said, one can understand why they might want to use these off the record “Monday Meetings” to decide how to vote about these items and not have to have these discussions in public.
Perhaps the way around this would be to ask that the City Administrator if he would be willing to record every single one of these Monday conversations and then play those conversations back during the City Council meeting so that the public can participate in the deliberative process or at least hear the discussion that they should be having during the council meeting.
It kind of seems like the easiest way to avoid the eventuality that they will be turned in and investigated is to just quit having the Monday meetings altogether. They could start conducting their conversations and deliberations at 6:30PM every second and fourth Monday of the month. But then again, the hard way makes a better story…
The Sac City Council, as evidenced by the fact that they express being conscious of avoiding gathering in quorum size don’t seem to want to deliberately violate Iowa’s open meetings laws. If you believe Mr. Brenny’s words, you can see that they are making an effort to conform to those laws. Their problem seems to be in regards to these troubling pre-meeting briefings. The city hides behind the excuse that they are legal without ever addressing the fact that the there is more honesty in just sitting down and working through the issues the way they are supposed to do... without deliberating before the meeting begins.
I am willing to bet that if I began litigation tomorrow, the hours upon hours of video I have documenting the city council NOT holding fourth publically would convince any judge that they are, by lack of discussion, serial violators of the Iowa open meeting laws… it’s just too obviously true to be denied.
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