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At-large Councilor Felix Arroyo has, in the first session of the year, filed for a hearing on creating a City Planning Board.

We haven't had a Planning Board since the BRA got it abolished, simply by sneaking the following sentence into unrelated legislation in 1960:

The city planning board of said city is hereby abolished, and all property of said city in the custody of such board and all appropriations of said city for the use of said board are heraby transferred to and vested in the authority; and all persons appointed by said board are hereby transferred to, and made employees of, the authority.

The BRA took it over specifically to evade public oversight through the City Council, and make sure planning would never get in the way of developers.

Obviously, it's a conflict of interest to be an advocate for developers and also a planning agency, which is supposed to review development projects with the overall well-being of the city in mind. No other city in America let an urban renewal authority take over their planning and zoning. Everywhere else, the renewal authority has to come before the City Council to ask for approval, like any other developer.

The zoning ordinance that implements planning is legislation, and in all other municipalities of Massachusetts -- and the rest of America -- puts it into the hands of the legislative branch -- the City Council. In fact, this is the most important responsiblity of a City Council -- to approve the laws ruling land use, and to oversee the planning for the city as a whole; in this context, Council's role in budget oversight can be properly informed. Here, the BRA elbowed the City Council out of the way, and does whatever it wants. We all have seen how that works.

This is not just about the BRA's power -- it's about whether we have a real City Council, and planning/zoning that is publicly accountable through it -- accountable to us, the citizens.

So, prepare to testify or write comment letters. This will be your chance to change the system -- to take the planning/zoning of your city from a 'quasi-public" authority and put it into a totally public body of government. If you don't like what they do, you can vote 'em out -- or at least call 'em up and talk to 'em, for heaven's sake.

I'll let you know as soon as I find out when the hearing is scheduled. I'm trying to get it held in the evening, so more people can come.

I posted the following on Joe Heisler's "Talk of the Neighborhoods" blog after his interview with Maureen Feeney:



On your Jan. 2 show, newly elected City Council President Maureen Feeney spoke about the pending Open Meeting Law suit against her Committee regarding its action on the pay raise Ordinance the Mayor filed last March.

It's important for the voters to know the other side of the story.

A Committee Report on the Ordinance, making major amendments and recommending Council passage, was approved by a majority of four of her Committee members. A majority "in favor" is required by Council Rules for an Ordinance to go to the Council floor for action.

The four members voted, not by sitting down in a meeting, but by individually communicating to her staff their "concurrence" with the Report. Serial communications among body members to arrive at a decision is a violation long established by case law. Using staff messengers as "gloves" doesn't remove the fingerprints.

Councilor Feeney, during her testimony, admitted that they voted, but told the court that it was not a vote on the substance of the ordinance. The Councilor's testimony was that the Committee members never deliberated, never discussed this controversial pay raise proposal with her or with each other between March 8 and the day they voted on May 2, and were merely providing a courtesy nod to her to bring to the Council floor her report, written solely by herself as the Chair, without any input from them.

Committee votes on Committee reports, she and Vice-Chair Stephen Murphy said, are just a housekeeping task, like a decision to order office supplies, a trivial head-count to bring the matter back to Council without regard to the substance, so public witness isn't required.

The judge asked what she'd do if most members voted against the Chair's report. She responded that she could bring it to the Council floor as a "Minority Report" -- an option that's not available in the City Council Rules and indeed would violate the Rules requiring majority approval prior to Council action.

The facts are these:

1) It's not just "housekeeping" when a committee takes action on legislation. Indeed, in this case, there were actually important amendments made to the original bill (including a pay raise for the City Clerk, a job in which Councilor Feeney has been quoted in the press as saying she has an interest). That they spoke individually, through intermediaries, calling it a "concurrence" instead of a "vote," doesn't change the basic fact: a majority of her committee took an action on the matter before them. A concurrence by a majority IS a meeting.

2) If this vote was, as Councilor Feeney insists, just a head-count of members agreeing to let the measure go to the Council for vote, that's a procedure required to be done right on the Council floor, according to Council Rules. It's called a "roll call vote," and a majority has to approve -- in public.

3) The Councilors are already changing the Rules to end Committee voting via individual votes sent to the chair. This procedure of voting without getting together in quorum was evidently contrived to skirt the Open Meeting Law, and has now been exposed.

Committee actions are the backbone of any body's work, because that's where the body's fact-finding, analysis and deliberation happen (or, in the Boston City Council, where analysis and deliberation doesn't happen, as we learned from the City Councilors' testimony). Whatever they do in those actions has to be witnessed by the public, including, as in this case, amending legislation and sending it for Council vote with a recommendation for passage. Isn't that self-evident?

The Councilors' defense of trivializing the work of Council Committees in order to deny the requirement for public witness, is a disheartening and cynical message to send to their constituents.

It's disappointing that they spend thousands of taxpayer dollars fighting lawsuits rather than taking a positive attitude and improving their transparency. It's especially wasteful when they've already begun Rules reform; their September 11, 2006, hearing on proposed Rule changes is most interesting, and a recording can be viewed via the Council website.

Unfortunately, then-President Michael Flaherty was still seeking, even at that reform hearing, mechanisms by which the Council could discuss issues "internally."

Our Councilors just have to honor the words introducing their personal copies of the Open Meeting Law: "The public's business must be done in public."

Posted at 10:21 AM
Monday, January 8, 2007

Have you ever put in an information request to a City or State agency under the Public Records Law (it's the state version of the federal Freedom of Information Act)?

If you have, you know how hard it is to get information out of our government, especially if it concerns the actions of elected officials. But with a few specific exceptions, you are entitled to those documents. And you should get them within ten business days.

But to conceal inconvenient truths, government officials and staff find ways to evade the Law. They invalidly claim exceptions, they delay, or they just stonewall and don't answer at all. Instead of waiving the costs to citizens, as the Law encourages, they may threaten to bill you for thousands of dollars for "searching" the information, and charge $.50 a page instead of the $.20 the law allows (the BRA and the City Clerk do this).

You can appeal for help to the State Supervisor of Public Records, Alan Cote, in the Secretary of the Commonwealth's Office. But it takes a long time, and if an official just ignores the request, the Supervisor's hands are tied -- Attorney General Tom Reilly has interpreted the Law in a way that undermines the State's ability to force disclosure. Peter Caruso and Robert Ambrogi are lawyers experienced in PRL cases and knowledgeable about reform efforts; we might invite them and Cote as guest speakers at an ABN forum on this subject. If you have advice to document seekers on how to deal with reluctant officials, please post it here.

The Supervisor and Secretary of State Galvin, together with a couple of legislators, have introduced legislation to reform the law, but without success so far; we need to push reform legislation this session. And one major reform will be especially important and especially difficut: removing the legislature's exemption from the law!

The second lawsuit filed by Kevin McCrea, Kathleen Devine and myself against the Boston City Council is coming to a head. This one is about the pay raise the Government Operations Committee approved for the Council, the Mayor, and numerous others, in a private vote in spring. The Law says a complaint based on valid evidence of a violation gets a hearing in court in ten days or at the earliest possible date. That hearing would put the Councilors, and any other relevant witnesses, on the stand for sworn testimony. Of course, the Council wants to avoid that above all, even if it means a decision -- or admission -- of guilt. As in the first suit we filed (and in the case against Council in 1987 by the state Attorney General), the Council lawyer (same lawyer as in l987!) was planning to file motions that would somehow keep the Councilors off the witness stand. Last Thursday, October 19, the court decided that we would go to trial, with or without the Motion for Summary Judgment the City Council lawyers want to file. This is big news! Will we get to question our Councilors, Mayor and others on the witness stand? Or will they....hmm, what will they try to do to escape? See Kevin's blog for more.

Three Boston registered voters, Kevin McCrea, Kathleen Devine and I, successfully sued the Boston City Council last year for gross violations of the Open Meeting Law in their vote to perpetuate the BRA's Urban Renewal Plans. We sued the Council again this May for violations of the Law in their process of voting to approve a pay raise for themselves, the Mayor and certain City Hall employees (see City Council Compensation Study on Kevin's home page).

Council President Michael Flaherty still insists that the Councilors are guiltless, and more than that -- that the Law gets in the way of their work -- as he keeps calling it, the "sausage factory" of getting to consensus. (Maybe he doesn't realize that the term mocks this kind of legislative process -- it means that if we knew what dirty dealing went into our laws, we wouldn't accept them.)

The Open Meeting Law is an important effort to protect the public from harmful behind-closed-door dealings of our governmental bodies; a state Attorney General Guideline clearly explains the intent. But the law as written has some flaws: it's hard to enforce, and in the end just fines the taxpayers for the misdeeds of their elected officials. Some legislators have been working to reform the Law, to clarify what is a "meeting," what activities are covered, and what are the penalties. All States have such laws, and some cities, like San Francisco, have their own that are useful models.

Have you had any experiences with such violations? Have you been kept out of meetings of governmental bodies, by lack of posting or even by physical barriers? Do you have evidence that a vote taken at the body's public meeting is really a rubber stamp of closed-door meetings of the members? If you feel that legal action is necessary, you can read our documents on Kevin McCrea's blog. How can we open up the people's business to the people?

And currently, the state legislature is not even subject to the Open Meeting Law; how can we make the Law apply to the very state legislators who control its passage?

Should we have an ABN community workshop on this topic, and work for state action on a better law and and better enforcement?