by Ron West - 2/28/2005NRH Hiding Records - Continuing!
by Ron West - 2/28/2005
On January 25th, I made the following request to the City Secretary of NRH,
requesting that I be sent copies of the following documents or, if there are
a large number, be permitted to inspect the following documents and receive
copies of the ones I would like:
1) A copy of any existing pending draft(s) of changes to existing
ordinances that are planned to be submitted for council consideration in the
next 45 days from the date of this request.
2) A copy of any existing pending draft(s) of any new ordinances
that are planned to be submitted for council consideration in the next 45 days
from the date of this request.
3) A copy of any written communication between any elected official
and any city employee, or between elected officials, requesting new city
ordinance preparation and/or changes to existing city ordinances. This request
is specifically applicable only to any item that exists under item 1 or item 2
above.
Clarification: This request is an attempt to allow citizen knowledge of
pending law changes in our city before they are submitted to council meetings.
Since we are not aware of any other vehicle to find such information, we are
planning to submit new open records requests every 15 days into the future.
This is not a request to release future or nonexistent information. It is a
specific request to identify only existing documents in whatever stage they are
in, prior to the final drafting that occurs upon submission to the council.
This clarification is presented so that you may develop a method to capture such
documents in the future to respond to these future open records requests. I
believe that the creation of new laws in our city must be opened to public view
before such laws are enacted.
To better understand the need for this open records request, you must first know that the current policy in our city is to exclude all public knowledge of changes in local law prior to the submission of changes or new laws to the City Council on Friday preceding any Council Meeting. The changes are then approved with virtually no public discussion by the Council and without any chance for any public input due to Council rules prohibiting public comments on agenda items.
Using basic logic, I apparently wrongfully assumed that actual drafts of proposed new ordinances or proposed changes to the laws that govern us would be open records. (This would be similar to the procedures used by the State Legislature where proposed new laws are submitted well in advance of voting them into law.) What happened in our city kind of leaves you cold.
The daughter of the NRH City Attorney - obviously under direction of Mr. Cunningham and the Mayor, immediately sent a letter to Greg Abbot, Attorney General of Texas, seeking to block the release of what I interpreted to be "deliberative material" and with the letter refused to release anything to me under this request, pending an "opinion" from the Attorney General. You can read this letter from Charlotte Staples here.
I naively assumed that I would still receive the "drafts" of law changes after reading this letter. I waited a couple of weeks and then contacted Ms. Hutson, City Secretary and found that they interpreted the letter to cover the entire request - including proposed changes to laws that were already drafted and existing in city records.
Back to the city attorney with letter #2 to Greg Abbot, clearly denying the release of anything about new laws in our city. This letter was written by George Staples and you can read it here. The city's position is that nothing will be released regarding proposed or pending new laws in our city.
I must admit at this point that I am baffled by the current majority on the council and the City Manager's stonewalling of the information flow to the citizens of our city. What is the danger to them to release drafts of changes to the laws that they plan to impose on us in the next 45 days? Are the changes they have drafted so onerous or bad that they do not want us to even get a clue of what they are? Do they feel they are so much smarter than us that we are not worthy of consideration or input? Maybe they feel we are just not smart enough to understand like they stated about not understanding what we voted for.
Aristocratic closed government in this magnitude is not what we elect officials for. When a citizen - any citizen - asks questions about planned future changes in the law governing him or her - open government would dictate a courteous and prompt response. Only if you have something bad to hide would you have reason to respond as our city does. When the information flow is blocked as by NRH actions, the immediate assumption - right or wrong - is that something bad is coming that they don't want us to know about.
These actions are further complicated by there being no functional channel to seek real enforcement of state laws regarding open records or open meetings. The "walking quorum" in NRH composed of the closed few - apparently decides what new laws we need or what changes need to be made to existing laws. They claim privilege to hide their discussions and even drafts of the changes until they are ready to spring them on us and then they vote them into law with the solid - lockstep - rubber stamp of the current incumbents on the City Council.
As citizens of NRH, I think we deserve better information and better treatment. Only by demanding open government can we even hope to protect ourselves from overreaching, overspending oppressive government. It starts at the local level and as was suggested by Star Telegram columnist Dave Lieber about a year ago, it is truly time for each of us to "ASK A BUNCH OF QUESTIONS"! Start by asking your currently elected council people what they are hiding and what new laws they plan to cram down our throats over just the next 45 days!