NRH Hiding Records Again?

by Ron West

   

 

        Sometimes I just wonder at how things can be so convoluted in our city.  You owe it to yourself to consider the following exchange and try to figure out why the City Staff or City Council is so afraid of information being viewed by the citizens.

Item 1:  The following is a request to the City under Texas Open Records Act seeking copies of new ordinances or changes to existing ordinances that are to be presented to the City Council for a vote.



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Open Records Request 012605-7
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 14:59:43 -0600
From: Ron West <rcw@ronwest.org>
To: City Secretary <CitySecretary@nrhtx.com>


Dear Ms. Hutson:

This is a request under the Texas Open Records Act, chapter 552 of the Government Code (formerly V.T.C.S. article 6252) as well as Article I, Sec. 8 of the Texas Constitution, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the common law of the State of Texas and any statue providing for public access to government information.

I request 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.
 
If you have any questions about the nature or scope of this request, please call me at the phone number listed below. If you determine that all or some portion of the information requested is excepted from required disclosure, I request that you provide me with the portions of the requested information that are public and reasonably segrable from that which you believe is excepted. If any records are in active use or in storage, please certify this fact in writing and set a date and hour within a reasonable time when the records will be available, as required by section 552.221 of the Act. If you determine that all or some portion of the information requested is excepted from required public disclosure under a particular exception, I request that you advise me as to which exceptions you believe apply. If you rely on previous determination, please advise me of the applicable court decision or Attorney General's opinion. If there is no such determination, please advise me of the request for such an opinion, as required under section 552.301 of the Act, and a dated copy of your letter to the Attorney General. I call your attention to section 522.353 of the Act, which provides penalties for a failure to release public records. I am prepared to pay reasonable costs for copying, within the guidelines set by sections 552.261, 552.262, 552.263, 552.267, 552.268, 552.269.

Thank you for your attention to this and I expect to hear from your office within ten days.

Sincerely,

Ron C. West

    This was my attempt to try to have prior knowledge of planned changes to city ordinances prior to them becoming law in our city.  At the present time the "ordinance process" seems to be almost magical.  On Friday preceding any City Council Meeting, a change to our existing ordinances or an entirely new ordinance is "proposed by city staff" and drafted in final form for signature at the council meeting that it appears on the agenda of.  During both Pre-Council Meetings and the Council Meeting (both open to the public) there is rarely any discussion of the ordinance.  The ordinance is not even read into the record or minutes.  The Council then with some magical wisdom votes to approve the ordinance (s) and it becomes the law of our city.  It should be noted that there is no requirement in law that public hearings be held.  Since we do not have knowledge of how these changes and new ordinances are originated, the open records request contained a notification that it would be re-submitted every 15 days to see what changes had occurred since the last request.  It should also be noted that the City has 10 business days to respond to such a request.

 

Item 2:  Today, January 31st, I received a copy of a letter from George Staples daughter, Charlotte L. Staples, who is apparently employed by the TOASE law firm as is City Attorney George Staples.  The letter was addressed to the Attorney General of Texas and is available for your reading at the following link:

file:///C:/nrhonline/foi_staples.pdf

The essence of the letter is that the City does not want - nor intend - to allow the pre-publication of the law changes it has in the works for our city.

        In my own mind, this latest effort to block the flow of needed information to a legitimate citizen request can only indicate that they have some "surprises" they are cooking up for us and they don't want us to know what they are until it is too late for publicity.  Why, if a change is good for our citizens and our city, would City Staff and the City Council want to deny the information to the public?   Does this indicate that somehow our city leadership has found a way around open meetings or do they truly have magical insight that allows them to vote on ordinance with virtually no research and no citizen input?

        Since the city is paying for the time spent to seek the opinion from the Attorney General to a family member of George Staples, how does this skirt the nepotism part of our City Charter?  Before this, I knew that Mr. Staples was in line to personally benefit from lawsuits against the city but I did not know that his daughter was being paid from city funds also.

        Hiding information from the citizens is bad business in my opinion.  What do you think?