Resolution Ensures Citizens Initiative Won’t Force May 2012 Charter Election
Laura Morrison
“It’s a kumbaya moment to celebrate,” Council Member Laura Morrison told The Austin Bulldog shortly before a press conference this morning at City Hall. “Usually we just talk about things we disagree on.”
Morrison, Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole, and Council Member Mike Martinez sponsored a council resolution on today’s agenda to confirm that the council intends to hold an election to amend the Austin City Charter in November 2012.
That assurance was sought by Austinites for Geographic Representation, which since late February has been building a broad citizens coalition to initiate a petition drive for a charter change that would establish a nonpartisan Independent Citizen Redistricting Commission that would draw 10 council districts that the Austin City Council would have no choice but to adopt. The group’s plan calls for only the mayor to continue being elected at-large. The petition drive launched with a rally October 22 that drew about a hundred people.
Striking an agreement on the charter election date was essential. If the petition drive were to trigger a May 2012 charter election, the City Council would have been forced to either put its own charter amendments on the May ballot, or be frozen out for two years if the citizens initiative got voter approval. Article XI, Section 5 of the Texas Constitution states that “no city charter shall be altered, amended or repealed oftener than every two years.”
The press conference was attended by Morrison and Cole, as well as NAACP Austin President Nelson Linder and Austinites for Geographic Representation members Roger Borgelt, Charlie Jackson, and Daniel Llanes.
Sheryl Cole
In separately answering The Austin Bulldog’s question, both Morrison and Cole said that sponsoring the resolution for a November 2012 charter election was designed to reassure the citizens group and should not be viewed as an endorsement of the plan being pushed by Austinites for Geographic Representation. “I’m waiting to see what the Charter Revision Committee recommends,” Cole said.
NAACP Austin President Linder, a member of the 2012 Charter Revision Committee that is studying what form of geographic representation to recommend to the City Council, told The Austin Bulldog he favors the citizens initiative. “I think it’s the best plan out there,” he said.
The need for geographic representation was laid bare by maps constructed by The Austin Bulldog and published August 4 that pinpoint the residential location of every mayor and council member elected over the last four decades.The unalterable fact that emerges is that large parts of Austin are not represented—or are grossly underrepresented—because of the at-large system of elections established by the Austin City Charter.
Seven charter recommendations, so far
The council-appointed 2012 Charter Revision Committee has been meeting since September 15 and is required to submit its recommendations for charter changes by January 31.
As reported by The Austin Bulldog October 18, the Charter Revision Committee has already approved seven recommendations for charter changes but has not yet dealt with the issue of geographic representation. The most important recommendation so far has been to ask voters to decide whether council elections should continue to be held in May or moved to November.
The City Council hotly debated in three different council meetings whether to hold the next election for mayor and three council members in May or November 2012. A narrow 4-3 majority voted to hold the election May 12. The majority argued that despite the provision in SB 100 giving the option to extend council terms and hold the next council election in November 2012, the City Charter says council elections will be held in May and only voters should decide to do otherwise. Both Morrison and Cole again reinforced this position at today’s press conference.
This report was made possible by contributions to The Austin Bulldog, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to provide investigative reporting in the public interest. You can help to sustain The Austin Bulldog’s reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
New System for Board and Commission Members Targeted for First Quarter 2012
Maybe you’re a neighborhood resident trying to figure out what developers are telling board and commission members outside open meetings via e-mail. Or perhaps you’re a developer trying to figure out what the neighborhood representatives are saying about your project in e-mails to board and commission members. If so, you would like to think you can get those e-mails by filing an open records request.
Maybe you can, maybe not.
While many of the boards and commissions are only advisory and perform due diligence to assist the City Council’s decision-making, 15 of them are “sovereign” bodies that can take an official government action, such as issuing a permit or granting a variance, even if that action can be appealed
Some sovereign boards have the power to issue subpoenas and compel testimony. Decisions made by many of the sovereign bodies can be appealed to the City Council, while decisions made by some sovereign boards and commissions may only be appealed through the courts, according to City Code Chapter 2-1.
At present, the city’s web pages for boards and commissions lists each appointed member’s personal e-mail address. The city is therefore actively encouraging communication about city business through a system that may not be fully responsive to open records requests filed under the Texas Public Information Act.
Shirley Gentry
The City Council directed the City Clerk to make recommendations about how to correct this situation as part of an April 7 resolution. City Clerk Shirley Gentry responded in a May 16 e-mail with three options and recommended one of them. The council has not acted on that information.
Gentry and the city’s Communications and Technology Management staff have continued to refine the earlier recommendations. On Tuesday, Gentry and Teri Pennington, deputy chief information officer for Communications and Technology Management, briefed the city council’s Audit and Finance Committee members in a meeting at City Hall.
Committee Chair Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole and Council Members Laura Morrison, Bill Spelman and Kathie Tovo were present and participated in the briefing.
If approved by the City Council when final recommendations are made, when implemented in the first quarter of 2012 as projected, the proposed system would assign city e-mail addresses to the 350 citizen volunteers who are appointed by the city council to serve on the city’s 55 boards and commissions.
The new system is designed to ensure that the city could find and provide e-mail messages that are responsive to open records requests, as required by the Texas Public Information Act.
The new system also envisions using technological methods that would prevent board and commission members from inadvertently violating the Texas Open Meetings Act by engaging in a discussion of city business among a quorum of members.
The planned system would enable anyone wishing to communicate with board or commission members about city business to send e-mails via the Internet to all members of a board or commission or to individual members. It would work the same way that e-mails may be sent to the entire City Council or to individual members via the city’s website at http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/site/city_hall_portal.htm.
Board and commission members would be licensed to use Microsoft’s Outlook Web App to access these messages via the Internet by logging in and using their personal communications devices, Pennington said. To see an illustration showing how this system would function, click here.
Gentry said the system would allow replies to be sent only to the sender and would prevent replying in such a manner that other board or commission members are brought into the dialogue.
All e-mails sent or received using this system would be captured on city servers. “If there was a public information request, we could just pull the e-mails out like we normally do,” Pennington told the committee.
Required to stop using personal accounts
Laura Morrison
Council Member Morrison noted that members of the city’s boards and commissions are active in the community and have over the years developed interactions with their personal e-mail accounts as board and commission members. “So the fact of the matter is that in reality we will have to acknowledge that they will be receiving city messages on their personal accounts.
“So I want to recognize that we acknowledge that those things can happen with our staff and city council members, but we’ve got guidelines in place that say if that should happen, you promptly forward that to your city e-mail account,” Morrison said. “I think we should get that integrated into our approach formally and ask folks to sign up to agree to that.”
Gentry replied, “You’re kind of hitting on our next steps. This isn’t going to happen overnight.” Gentry said that training for board and commission members would have to be incorporated into the City Code. Chapter 2-1-23 currently provides training requirements that must be complied with as a condition of serving. “…If you want to serve in the council board structure, these are things you have to agree to and if you refuse to comply with them you could impact your own eligibility,” Gentry told the committee.
Gentry said she would also suggest preparing an online training program and require board and commission members to complete it. The program would remind board and commission members that in their official duties they speak on behalf of the city. The program would specify the appropriate use of e-mails about city business.
Pennington told the committee that the upfront cost of licensing and mailbox space for the 350 board and commission members would cost about $36,000. She estimated it would require about $4,300 for staff time to set up the proposed system and about $2,000 in staff time to support the system long-term. That’s a tiny fraction of what the city already spends to provide e-mail service for thousands of employees.
The City Council passed a resolution April 7 to enact a policy that would bring its own electronic communications into compliance with the Texas Public Information Act. The adopted resolution applies the policy only to the mayor, city council members and the city employees directly appointed by the city council: the city manager, city clerk, city auditor, chief judge of the municipal court, and municipal court clerk.
The same resolution directed City Manager Marc Ott to develop a similar policy for the city’s 12,000 employees, and directed City Clerk Gentry to develop a policy for use of personal communication devices for conducting city business by members of city boards and commissions with sovereign authority—not all boards and commissions.
“You may recall that your original resolution focused on sovereign boards,” Gentry told committee members. “We’re sort of hoping that if it’s a reasonable cost we would make (this system available) for all board members.
“We would have to launch the software and test it,” Gentry said. “We didn’t anticipate that this would be ready until at least the first quarter of 2012 for us to accomplish all that. But we would be coming back to the full council with suggestions for what standards we should set.”
City Manager Ott issued a policy for city employees on August 4 in Administrative Bulletin 08-06. That policy is deeply flawed according to numerous experts in the state’s open government laws, as reported by The Austin Bulldog August 10 and September 13.
Flaws in the policy include not stating that the correspondence should be forwarded promptly and leaving it to the discretion of each employee to decide whether the correspondence needs to be forwarded for retention. The policy lacks any means of preventing unlawful deletion of public records or auditing compliance.
This report was made possible by contributions to The Austin Bulldog, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to provide investigative reporting in the public interest. You can help to sustain The Austin Bulldog’s reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
Related articles
This is the 19th in a series of articles focusing on the City of Austin’s problems in complying with the Texas Public Information Act. Related articles are listed here:
Austinites for Geographic Representation Needs 20,000 Signatures by Mid-January
What we want? Council districts!
When do we want them? Now!
How will we get them? Petition!
When do we start? Now!
Such might be the chants of members of Austinites for Geographic Representation if they were to take to the streets like the protestors of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Austin.
But you won’t be hearing chants from the members of this grass-roots citizens initiative to get on the ballot a proposition to establish a nonpartisan Independent Citizen Redistricting Commission that would draw 10 council districts that the Austin City Council would have no choice but to adopt. The group’s plan calls for only the mayor to continue being elected at-large.
Austin is the most populous city in the United States to elect its entire city council at-large, and the only major metropolitan city in Texas to do so, according to a report produced last month by City Demographer Ryan Robinson. Austin voters, however, have voted down propositions for some form of council districts six times between 1973 and 2002.
Austinites for Geographic Representation has scheduled a press conference for noon tomorrow at City Hall and a campaign kickoff rally 3-5pm Saturday at Mexitas Restaurant, 1109 N. I-35. The group has leased an office at 7901 Cameron Road and formed a Specific Purpose Political Action Committee whose treasurer, Stacy Suits, ran two unsuccessful campaigns for geographic representation in 1985 and 1988.
Linda Curtis
The petition drive is being organized by Linda Curtis of ChangeAustin.org. Curtis has previously led four successful petition drives to get measures before Austin voters. This petition campaign is not employing paid signature gatherers but instead has formed a broad coalition of community organizations that will actively circulate petitions. This initiative has been endorsed by a number of organizations including ChangeAustin.org, Del Valle Community Coalition, El Concilio, Gray Panthers of Austin, LULAC District 7, LULAC District 12, NAACP Austin, Texans for Accountable Government, Travis County Green Party, and University of Texas at Austin Student Government.The League of Women Voters Austin Area is meeting tonight to consider endorsing the initiative, said chapter president Stewart Snider. The Austin Neighborhoods Council may consider an endorsement at its October 26 meeting. The petition drive has a Facebook page and will soon publish petition forms online.
The petition drive, if successful, would force the city council to put its own proposed charter amendmentson the May ballot as well.Article XI, Section 5 of the Texas Constitution states that “no city charter shall be altered, amended or repealed oftener than every two years.” To prepare for that possibility, the 2012 Charter Revision Committee has a January 31 deadline to submit its recommendations for council consideration.
Charter committee backs seven changes
The Charter Review Commission held its third meeting last Thursday at Austin Community College’s Highland Business Center and after lengthy discussion voted 14-1 (Delores Lenzy-Jones opposed) to approve subcommittee recommendations for seven charter changes, as follows:
Set election date, terms—Voters would be asked to decide whether council elections should continue to be held in May or moved to November. (This is consistent with what the city council majority decided on several 4-3 votes when setting the next council election for May 12, 2012). The charter committee voted to recommend preserving staggered three-year terms and continuing to limit service to three terms.
Prohibit switching places—Council members would be barred from switching council places to avoid term limits.
Balance petition requirements—Reduce the number of signatures for a citizen-initiated ordinance to be the same as a citizen initiated charter change (five percent of the registered voters or 20,000 signatures, whichever is smaller, per state law). At present, ordinances initiated by petition require the signatures of 10 percent of registered voters to get on the ballot.
Council supervises city attorney—The city attorney would report to the city council and the attorney would be given authority to appoint deputy city attorneys.
Council hires own staff—The elected city council members would directly appoint their staff members (technically, all city employees currently work for the city manager).
Clerk appoints deputies—The city clerk, who already works directly for the city council, would be given authority to appoint deputy clerks.
Auditor appoints deputies—The city auditor, who already works directly for the city council, would be given authority to appoint deputy auditors.
The committee will continue its work and may recommend other items be placed on the ballot. The committee is, for example, charged with making a recommendation about some form of council districts and reviewing a variety of maps that have been drawn for such districts.
Peck Young
Peck Young, a longtime Austin political consultant who is now volunteering with Austinites for Geographic Representation, spoke to the Charter Revision Committee. He said that over a period of 35 years he had personally drawn redistricting plans in three states that passed muster with the Justice Department, but always while working for and being paid by politicians who wanted to make sure they would stay in office. He now advocates a different way of creating council districts.
“Just because you have the right to draw maps (for city council districts) doesn’t mean you are obligated to draw maps. You could recommend that the city council use the citizens commission (which is part of the Austinites for Geographic Representation petition plan). “I’m not sure how many politicians will like it, but I guarantee it’s more democratic than anything we’ve had in this area most of my adult life.”
Ted Siff
Even recommending the seven charter changes listed above was a concern to Ted Siff, who chaired the subcommittee that formulated these recommendations. He noted that the most important issue the committee faces is to decide on a recommendation for some form of council districts.
“Almost anything on the same ballot with geographic representation could affect the vote,” Siff said at the Thursday committee meeting. “So we could argue that we should not put anything on the same ballot, but we felt our charge is to come back with recommendations.”
Ultimately, the city council must decide which of these charter changes, if any, will go on the ballot.
Although a successful petition drive would force the city council to put Austinites for Geographic Representation’s proposition before voters, the council has the final authority on how the ballot language is worded. That has been a contentious issue in past citizen initiatives.
Charter committee member Fred Cantu, chairman of the Austin Tejano Democrats, addressed the problem, saying that in the past, “City councils have been inhospitable to ballot initiatives. The council has almost unlimited discretion on how to describe the ballot language. I think we should put in criteria to (require) a fair and neutral description (on the ballot) to promote faith in government.”
“Their ain’t a lot of faith right now,” quipped former State Senator Gonzalo Barrientos (D-Austin), who chairs the charter committee.
This report was made possible by contributions to The Austin Bulldog, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to provide investigative reporting in the public interest. You can help to sustain The Austin Bulldog’s reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
Community Coalition, Austin Neighborhoods Council and Charter Revision Committee All Working on Issues
There’s a showdown coming in a Austin City Council meeting scheduled for Thursday and a special-called council meeting on Friday.
The result will decide whether the next election for a mayor and three council members will be held in May or November 2012. Both options are on the table as the sole items posted for action in the Friday meeting scheduled to begin at 1:30pm.
Council proponents of the May 2012 election were ready to vote on second reading at today’s work session and third and final reading at Thursday’s regular meeting.
But discussion today reminded council members that the rules they adopted March 2 preclude taking action during a work session. That triggered the posting of a special-called meeting on Friday.
Assuming none of the four council members who previously voted for a May 12 council election changes their position (Sheryl Cole, Laura Morrison, Bill Spelman and Kathie Tovo), the Friday meeting will give final approval for that date.
An item on Thursday’s council agenda would authorize $500,464 for Travis County to purchase electronic voting machines to support the May election.
Mayor Lee Leffingwell asked County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir and City Clerk Shirley Gentry to provide the council with the total estimated cost to be incurred in holding a May 2012 election. He noted that whatever that cost is, it will be in addition to the cost of a November 2012 election that is likely to be held to vote on other matters.
While the next election for a mayor and three council members may be seven months away, a host of factors affecting the outcome of that election are very much in play, including a possible petition drive for a charter amendment to change the way council members are elected.
Petition could force May charter election
Austinites for Geographic Representation, a broad coalition of community organizations that has been meeting since late February, met September 26 to further refine the draft language for a petition drive to get its 10-1 council districting plan on the ballot. The plan, if approved by voters, would require establishment of a nonpartisan Independent Citizen Redistricting Commission to draw 10 geographic council districts that the council would have no choice but to adopt. The Austin Bulldog’s August 24 report listed the organizations involved in Austinites for Geographic Representation.
The group’s goal is to replace the current at-large system of electing council members that results in many parts of Austin not being represented, or being grossly underrepresented. These inequities were laid bare by The Austin Bulldog’s August 4 report that mapped 40 years of election history.
Austinites for Geographic Representation must submit its petition to City Clerk Shirley Gentry by mid-January. This is necessary to allow time for validating the petition and preparing documents for council action to put the measure on the May 12 ballot, Gentry said in an October 3 e-mail.
Local Government Code Section 9.004(a) requires a charter-amendment petition to have the valid signatures of at least 20,000 of the city’s qualified voters to get on the ballot. That’s a tall order to be accomplished in just three months. But Linda Curtis, who is coordinating efforts for Austinites for Geographic Representation, has previously led four successful petition drives in Austin that were decided on the following election dates:
October 1995—The Save Austin From Extravagance petition drive was led by Curtis and former Austin City Council Member Bob Larson. SAFE forced an election that stalled the city council’s intention to issue $10 million in bonds without voter approval to build the baseball Park on the Colorado. If successful, the Triple A Phoenix Firebirds were to move here and become the Austin Swing. The measure hit a home run, with 63 percent of voters nixing the bonds for a baseball stadium.
November 1997—Curtis led the Austinites for a Little Less Corruption petition drive for a charter amendment to regulate political fundraising and expenditures (approved by 72 percent of voters).
May 2002—Curtis led a petition drive for a charter amendment to create a public financing system for city council campaigns (opposed by 74 percent of voters); and to allow Council Member Beverly Griffith to exceed term limits and get on the ballot for a third term (Griffith got on the ballot but lost the election).
November 2008—Curtis led the Stop Domain Subsidies petition drive for a charter amendment to prohibit the city from entering into future agreements to provide financial incentives for retail uses and to stop such incentives under existing agreements (defeated by 52 percent of voters).
Austin Neighborhoods Council action
The politically powerful Austin Neighborhoods Council has been working on reviewing a number of council districting plans of its own. Several draft plans were presented to scores of ANC members at the September 28 meeting by committee chair Lorraine Atherton. These will be debated and voted on at the ANC meeting in November, ANC President Steve Aleman said.
Several participants in Austinites for Geographic Representation—Lupe Sosa, an elected member of Austin Community College’s Board of Trustees; Roger Borgelt, attorney and vice president of the Travis County Republican Party; and Mary Rudig, president of the North Austin Coalition of Neighborhoods—made presentations to the Austin Neighborhoods Council.
The 10-1 plan that Austinites for Geographic Representation is pushing could be offered by any ANC member organization for ANC’s adoption, Aleman said. Once the ANC adopts a position, it will be presented to the council-appointed 2012 Charter Revision Committee for consideration.
2012 Charter Revision Committee
The 15-member Charter Revision Committee held its second meeting September 29 and listened to comments from 10 participants in the Austinites for Geographic Representation coalition. The committee faces a January 31 deadline for making recommendations to the city council about a council districting plan and many other possible charter changes.
The Charter Review Committee has acknowledged that its most important job is to devise a plan for some form of geographic representation on the city council. But, as required by various council resolutions, a subcommittee has been studying dozens of proposals that have nothing to do with geographic representation. Subcommittee Chair Ted Siff said not all of these would require a charter amendment, but added, “I’m concerned that if any of these are put on the ballot it might affect the outcome of the vote on geographic representation.” (Click here to see the list.)
The subcommittee will continue working and bring back a more refined report at the next committee meeting, scheduled for October 13. (To see the meeting schedule and other information about the Charter Revision Committee’s work, click here.)
Doug Matthews, the city’s chief communications director, made a presentation to the Charter Revision Committee about a wide variety of options that might be used to engage citizens in the charter revision process. (Click here to see the 12-page presentation.) The committee unanimously agreed to vote on an outreach plan at its next meeting.
This report was made possible by contributions to The Austin Bulldog, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to provide investigative reporting in the public interest. You can help to sustain The Austin Bulldog’s reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
Council Members Don’t Punch the Clock But Their Calendars Tell Citizens a Lot
Or Not, in the Case of Council Member Martinez, Who Redacts Hundreds of Entries
The 2011 Austin City Council: (L-R) Mayor Lee Leffingwell and Council Members Laura Morrison, Chris Riley, Bill Spelman, Mike Martinez, Sheryl Cole, Kathie Tovo
Elected officials do a variety of things to carry out their official duties but more than anything else they go to meetings—lots and lots of meetings.
They attend City Council meetings. City committee meetings. Meetings with city staff. Meetings with lobbyists. Meetings with citizens. Meetings with journalists. Meetings of other government agencies where individual council members represent the City of Austin, like Capital Metro, Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, Clean Air Coalition, and Capital Area Council of Governments.
The mayor and all Austin City Council members except Kathie Tovo, who took office in late June, have also been involved in a number of meetings critical to their political futures, dealing with the Travis County Attorney David Escamilla’s ongoing investigation of possible open meetings violations.
These and other events are self-reported in the official calendars maintained by their council offices and, as such, are public records.
When The Austin Bulldog broke the January 25 story about Austin City Council members possibly violating the Texas Open Meetings Act, that investigative report was based, in part, on the calendars published on the city website by four council members.
Those calendars documented the fact that the mayor and each council member participated in hundreds of private meetings in calendar year 2010 to deliberate city business. The calendars showed that that a regularly scheduled series of meetings were held with each other in days preceding posted council meetings.
Today, only two council members publish their official calendars online: Laura Morrison and Bill Spelman. Council Member Randi Shade was defeated in the June 18 runoff election by Kathie Tovo. Council Member Chris Riley—who participated in 256 private meetings with other council members in 2010, as The Austin Bulldogreported January 30—no longer updates his calendar online.
There is no legal requirement for elected officials to publish their calendars online. Doing so provides a high degree of transparency and accountability.
What’s in the calendars?
The calendars for January through July 2011 published here for Council Members Laura Morrison and Bill Spelman were downloaded from their city web pages.
The calendars for that period for Mayor Lee Leffingwell; Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole; Council Members Mike Martinez, Chris Riley, and Kathie Tovo; and City Manager Marc Ott, were obtained through an open records request filed August 8. Paper copies of the calendars were provided September 1. The City erroneously issued a cost estimate of $1,707 to provide these records. That mistake was called to the city’s attention and the records were ultimately provided at no charge.
In negotiating the release of these calendars with the city’s public information office, The Austin Bulldog allowed the redaction, or blacking out, of entries that involved purely personal events, such as a medical appointment, a kid’s soccer game.
The Austin Bulldog did not agree to redaction of entries for social events, which may involve interacting with people who do business with the City of Austin.
Calendars for the mayor and council members show all seven days of the week. The city manager’s calendar does not include weekends.
Private meetings stopped—The longstanding practice of holding regularly scheduled one-on-one and two-on-one meetings each week before public council meetings was halted after The Austin Bulldog broke the story about this being a possible violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act. Instead, the council started holding regularly scheduled public work sessions that are also streamed online, like regular council meetings.
Redactions vary
The calendars provided for Council Members Morrison, Riley, and Spelman, and City Manager Marc Ott reflect all events with none blacked out.
Mayor Leffingwell redacted 8 entries.
Mayor Pro Tem Cole redacted 14 entries.
Council Member Martinez redacted 198 entries. Given the high number of his redactions compared to other council members, The Austin Bulldog invited Martinez to provide an explanation. In an e-mail he wrote:
“There could be any number of reasons as to why there were less redactions in other’s responsive information the most obvious of which would be some other personal calendar that some might choose to keep.
“In order for me to meet my Council responsibilities and obligations, as well as those as a father and husband, I keep all personal and public appointments and info on one calendar. As such, the responsive information I provided to you is a direct result of direction from our Law Department regarding what types of information should be provided.
“My wife (Lara Wendler) and I are deeply committed to our son and our community. Lara has many events and engagements as well, and I attend to support her. Our son is extremely active and we make every attempt to attend each and every one of his engagements. Suffice to say, I will not provide calendar information related to my son or my wife—or any other family/personal events for that matter. I would trust that you would consider that information neither responsive nor appropriate for any story you are working on.”
Legal issues
On June 8, Mayor Leffingwell and Council Members Martinez, Riley and Spelman were each, individually, given an “investigation briefing,” possibly concerning the open meetings investigation being conducted by the county attorney’s office. None of the other council members’ calendars reflect such a briefing.
Council Members Riley and Spelman have each met with prosecutors in the county attorney’s office. Riley did so on June 14 and June 22, and Spelman did so on July 15, according to their calendars. If other council members have met with the county attorney’s office concerning the open meetings investigation, it is not reflected in their calendars.
All council members have met with the city attorney, assistant city attorneys, and/or outside attorneys hired to deal with the open meetings investigation at least once, although it is unclear how many of these meetings were involved in the open meetings investigation. Martinez had nine such meetings; Leffingwell had four; Ott had four; Morrison, Riley and Spelman each had two; and Cole had one.
The 2011 calendars January through July
The calendars of the mayor, each council member, and the city manager are published here so that the citizens of Austin may review them and see how their elected officials and city manager use the time for which they are compensated at taxpayers’ expense. (Go ahead, poke around and see what you find.)
To read the 2011 calendars click on the links provided below:
The 2010 calendars forCouncil Members Morrison, Riley, Shade, and Spelman were downloaded in January from their city web pages. The calendars forMayor Leffingwell and Council Members Cole and Martinez were obtained through an open records request.
To read the 2010 calendars click on the links provided below:
This report was made possible by contributions to The Austin Bulldog, which operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to provide investigative reporting in the public interest. You can help to sustain The Austin Bulldog’s reporting by making a tax-deductible contribution.
