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Corralling board and commission e-mails

Posted Thursday, October 27, 2011 7:03pm
City of Austin Moving, Slowly, Toward Greater
Transparency in Electronic Communication

New System for Board and Commission
Members Targeted for First Quarter 2012


By Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2011

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 GentryThe 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

Grass-roots democracy pushing petition

Posted Tuesday, October 18, 2011 9am
Coalition Launching Petition Drive to
Get on Ballot for May 2012 Election

Austinites for Geographic Representation
Needs 20,000 Signatures by Mid-January

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2011

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 CurtisThe 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. (To see a complete list of organizations and individuals endorsing this initiative, click here.) 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

Council election date to be set Friday

Posted October 4, 2011 6:54pm
Broad Community Interest Focusing on
How Mayor and Council Members Elected

Community Coalition, Austin Neighborhoods Council
and Charter Revision Committee All Working on Issues


by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2011

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

What do council members do all day?

Posted Tuesday, September 20, 2011 10:00 am
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

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2011

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 Bulldog reported 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?

City employee e-communication policy watered down

Posted Tuesday, September 13, 2011 3:31pm
Employee E-Communication Policy Drafts
Show Each Revision Weakened Rules

Policy That Was Near Fully Compliant
on First Draft Crippled by Changes

by Ken Martin
© The Austin Bulldog 2011

A policy to ensure the City of Austin’s 12,000 employees comply with state law for retention of public records went from being a fully compliant initial proposal to an implemented policy that falls woefully short of compliance, say experts in the state's open government laws.

Marc OttThe Austin Bulldog reported August 10 on the new policy established by Austin City Manager Marc Ott to guide city employees in how to handle electronic communications about city business. The policy states if circumstances require communicating about city business on a personal communication device or account, that correspondence should be forwarded to a city account.

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.

Through an open records request The Austin Bulldog obtained two draft versions of the Administrative Bulletin that was ultimately issued August 4 by the city manager. The drafts, dated June 1 and June 15, when compared to each other and the bulletin issued, show how the proposed policy was gutted.

Four experts in the state’s open government laws who are volunteer hotline attorneys with the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas reviewed the two drafts and the Administrative Bulletin provided by The Austin Bulldog.

“This is a drastic watering down of a policy that was originally intended to comply with the law and provide transparency in government,” said Joel White of the Austin law firm Joel R. White and Associates. He is a past president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and has represented a wide range of media clients for more than two decades.

Thomas GregorThomas Gregor of the Houston law firm of Ogden, Gibson, Broocks, Longoria and Hall LLP, said in an e-mail, “As originally drafted, the policy better adheres to the tenets and the spirit of open government. Unfortunately, the policy that was ultimately issued was diminished to the point that, while paying lip service to open government, does not ensure or verify the retention of any public information that is generated on a personal device.

“The end result is that there remains a significant gap in the City’s compliance with the open government laws,” Gregor said.

Joe LarsenJoe Larsen, special counsel to the Houston-based international law firm of Sedgwick, Detert, Moran and Arnold LLP, said in an e-mail, “I think the policy has been significantly weakened by giving department directors complete latitude to determine how the policy is communicated and not requiring documentation that each employee has received and has access to the information in the bulletin. This will have two likely results:

“First, instead of a formal meeting where the importance of the policy is explained and underscored, any manner of delivery is envisioned. Without a formal setting, the importance of the policy will not be conveyed.

“Second, without a roster or verification, there will be no incentive to insure that the policy is timely communicated and no way of verifying if it has. An employee is very likely to state that he/she was unaware of the policy.

“It is this very issue—claims of lack of knowledge of proper policy—that led to the implementation of required training for public information officers of governmental bodies on the Public Information Act. These officers must have a certificate indicating that they took the required training.

“By requiring employees to forward their administrative value communications to a City account, the City has effectively made each employee the public information officer for his/her personal communication device accounts, and the communication of this policy should also be in a formal setting and it should be documented.”

Strong policy draft weakened by changes

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