City of Austin

It took the City of Austin 15 months to establish a formal procedure but, finally, the 368 members of the city’s 51 boards and commissions are going to be brought into the city’s e-mail system.

The action is needed to bring the city into compliance with the Texas Public Information Act by enabling the city to collect, assemble, and maintain e-mails about city business that board and commission members send or receive. This will allow the city to search the city’s server to find information responsive to public information requests and produce those records for inspection.

For many years the city’s website for each board and commission listed each member’s personal e-mail address.

“This is easily the most well thought-out policy addressing this issue, both from the private device/account and city server side, that I have seen,” said Joseph Larsen, special counsel to Sedgwick LLP. Larsen is an expert on open government laws and a volunteer attorney for the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. “... overall I think this could serve as a template for policies for other City officers and employees and for other governmental bodies.”

This is the third and final phase of improving the city’s handling of electronic communications in response to our lawsuit, The Austin Bulldog v. Mayor Lee Leffingwell et al filed March 1, 2012, and the county attorney’s ongoing investigation of the City Council’s violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act that The Austin Bulldog exposed January 25, 2011.

City Council Member Chris Riley, an attorney, initially failed to comply with the Austin City Code by not fully reporting the financial activity of his domestic partner in his latest Statement of Financial Information.

The Austin Bulldog’s June 2, 2011, report covered similar discrepancies in Riley’s annual financial statements for 2009 and 2010.

Riley’s mid-year Statement of Financial Information covering the first six months of 2012, filed July 27, indicates that his domestic partner, Denise Brady, is an “attorney/state employee.” The report contains no other information as to Brady's specific employer, her income, investments, real property interests, debts, or boards of directors on which she may be serving, as required by City Code Sections 2-2-72(A) and 2-7-2(10).

The Austin City Council adjourned today for a closed-door executive session to tackle five posted agenda items—not the least of which was to evaluate the performance of and consider the compensation and benefits for City Manager Marc Ott.

Four hours and 20 minutes later the council reconvened in open session. After quickly disposing of two other agenda items, Mayor Lee Leffingwell called on Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole.

Cole said, “I just wanted to say that we did in executive session take up Item Number 70, with respect to the compensation and benefits of the city manager, and we look forward to his continued service.”

That was the entire discussion of Marc Ott’s performance evaluation. Cole’s statement lasted a mere 12 seconds.

In late 2007, as Austin City Manager Toby Futrell was getting ready to retire, the city hired Arcus, a consulting firm based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to find suitable candidates for a new city manager.

Marc Ott, one of two finalists, was named city manager by a vote of 6-0 January 17, 2008, with one abstention.

The undated 22-page Arcus report, which The Austin Bulldog obtained through an open records request, suggests that Ott, who was formerly an assistant city manager of the City of Fort Worth, and another Fort Worth executive essentially came as a package deal.

A high-noon rally by a loud crowd of Austinites for Geographic Representation (AGR) pulled no punches in criticizing the Austin City Council for casting a final vote today to put the 8-2-1 plan for electing council members on the same ballot as the 10-1 plan the group got on the ballot through petition.

AGR’s main complaints are that there was no groundswell of support for the 8-2-1 plan; that it goes against the recommendations of the council-appointed 2012 Charter Revision Committee, which recommended the 10-1 plan; and that it adds confusion and competition for voter approval of any form of geographic representation. Previous opportunities to enact some form of geographic representation have been voted down six times between 1973 and 2002.

A secondary issue for AGR is that only the first reading of the ordinance to put the 8-2-1 plan on the ballot was voted on in a regular City Council meeting, while the last two readings were voted on in council work sessions.

Two hours before the press conference, during the morning portion of today’s council work session, Mayor Lee Leffingwell announced that the votes taken in work session were driven by the deadline to approve measures to go on the ballot.