In his January 30th, 2009 letter to the Oshkosh Common Council, Mayor Tower said this: "After speaking with Bryan, I've asked Lynn to schedule a Closed Meeting after the February 24th meeting for discussion of 2009 goals for Mark." [Note: Bryan is Deputy Mayor Bryan Bain, Lynn is City Attorney Lynn Lorenson, and Mark is City Manager Mark Rohloff.]
I just asked City Clerk Pam Ubrig to place this item on the Feb. 24th agenda under Council Member Statements, Announcements, Discussion: "Does setting City Manager goals in closed executive session fall within the letter and spirit of the Open Meetings Law?"
Many of you will recall that in 2007 (before Jess King and I were elected), the Council spent what seemed like an excessive amount of time in Executive session to come up with what were widely peceived as (to put it as charitably as possible) not very challenging goals for then City Manager Wollangk. Those can be found here.
I understand why an evaluation of the City Manager needs to be done in closed session. Such an evaluation is clearly a personnel matter. But to go into closed session to set goals? Why can't the Council do that in open session, preferably with public input into what the goals should be? If anyone--councilor or other citizen--chooses to use such a forum for public evaluation of the City Manager, the Mayor simply needs to rule him or her out of order and move on.
If a strong case is made for going into closed session on the 24th, I will certainly join my colleagues. But "strong case" has to be more than a narrow reading of the Open Meetings law. We need to be concerned not just with the letter, but also the spirit of that law.
If a strong case is not made, I will refuse to go into the session and will organize my own public forum at which citizens can advise me (and whatever other councilors attend) as to what they think should be the goals for 2009.
I am not saying that the City Manager's goals should be set by the general public instead of the Council. All I am saying is that, absent a compelling reason not to, the Council should deliberate about and set those goals in open session.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
Is the end of February a good time to set goals for the year?
We exceeded our calendar carrying capacity so we had to cull January and February. (Sorry, couldn't resist.).
I beleive we, the people should have ourselves heard and have input from us considered. Case in point: Provide a deer management solution for the city where knowledgeable authorities are brought in to assist with viable solutions and critieria laid down to determine whether a solution fails or succeeds in order to determine other options. Data based solutions should drive the decision making along with continued data gathering in order to monitor the continued progress or failure. Decisions ought to be made along with well documented references with the sources publicly making statements or putting them in writing.
-GV
GV,
I guess the idea is that any citizen could email, call, etc. with goal suggestions, and then we could go into closed session to hash them out and come to some consensus as to what should be the goals.
I think we should do that hashing out in public. Not only is that more in line with the spirit of the open meetings law, but it would also allow citizens who make goal suggestions to see and hear for themselves if the Council is taking them seriously.
Establishing goals would seem from my out of town point view to be the ideal place for the Oshkosh sustainability committee or council to make some recommendations.
Every time I heard about one of these closed sessions the image that comes to mind is of the "Saturday Night Live" sketch called "The Wide Ends" which always includes a lot hand massaging in anticipation of treats.
One suggestion I would make is to ask Mr. Rohloff to create his own set of goal and submit them prior to the Council's creation of goals/standards of performance. Ask him to create a list of quantifiable goals with benchmarks.
My experience with goal setting has always been to bring both the executive and the employees goals to the discussion. Often times, the combination brings ideas for meshing and negotiating what's do-able and what's wish list (on both sides).
Mr. Rohloff should be as much part of his goal setting/standards of performance process as all of you are.
Rule one- Always ask the guy who actually does the job for input. They have insights that you don't.
I would also request that he direct his staff to create a list of goals/performance standards for their duties/responsibilities which could be incorporated into the greater goal setting process.
And in private session, you will be able to discuss and address specific departmental and interdepartmental personnel/performance issues without violating personal and privacy rights.
CJ,
Thanks for your perspective. Do you see the City Manager's submission of goals as a public process? Or do you think only the 7 members of the council should have acces to that information?
"Establishing goals would seem from my out of town point view to be the ideal place for the Oshkosh sustainability committee or council to make some recommendations."
Excellent suggestion. However, I don't think they are far enough with their plan to make a plan. Worth submitting the request though.
--------
Tony,
You asked:
Do you see the City Manager's submission of goals as a public process? Or do you think only the 7 members of the council should have acces to that information?
According to Statute 19.81(1) I would be hard pressed to say it should be a closed meeting. It doesn't appear to "be incompatible with the conduct of public affairs." I don't think it should be part of the main City Council meeting, but be treated like a workshop- to be held after the main meeting.....
Wis. Stat. § 19.81(1).
In order to advance this policy, the open meetings law requires that “all meetings of all state and local
governmental bodies shall be publicly held in places reasonably accessible to members of the public and shall be open to all citizens at all times unless otherwise expressly provided by law.” Wis. Stat. § 19.81(2). There is thus a presumption that meetings of governmental bodies must be held in open session. State ex rel. Newspapers v. Showers, 135 Wis. 2d 77, 97, 398 N.W.2d 154 (1987). Although there are some exemptions allowing closed sessions in specified circumstances, they are to be invoked sparingly and only where necessary to protect the public interest. The policy of the open meetings law dictates that governmental bodies convene in closed session only where holding an open session would be incompatible with the conduct of governmental affairs."
(further down on page 5)
...The definition of a “governmental body” is only rarely satisfied when groups of a governmental unit’s employees gather on a subject within the unit’s jurisdiction. Thus, for example, the Attorney General concluded that the predecessor of the current open meetings law did not apply when a department head met with some or even all of his or her staff. 57 Op. Att’y Gen. 213, 216 (1968). Similarly, the Attorney General’s Office has
advised that the courts would be unlikely to conclude that meetings between the administrators of a governmental agency and the agency’s employees, or between governmental employees and representatives of a governmental contractor were “governmental bodies” subject to the open meetings law. Peplnjak Correspondence, June 8, 1998. However, where an already-existing numerically definable group of employees of a governmental entity are assigned by the entity’s chief administrative officer to prepare recommendations for the entity’s policymaking
board, the group’s meetings with respect to the subject of the directive are subject to the open meetings law. Tylka Correspondence, June 8, 2005
(and on page 12)
" b. Closed session
The notice provision in Wis. Stat. § 19.84(2) requires that if the chief presiding officer or the officer’s designee knows at the time he or she gives notice of a meeting that a closed session is contemplated, the notice must contain the subject matter to be considered in closed session. Such notice “must contain enough information for the public to discern whether the subject matter is authorized for closed session under § 19.85(1).” Buswell, 2007 WI 71, ¶ 37 n.7. The Attorney General has advised that notice of closed sessions must contain the specific nature of the business, as well as the exemption(s) under which the chief presiding officer believes a closed session is authorized. 66 Op. Att’y Gen. 93, 98. Merely identifying and quoting from a statutory exemption does not reasonably identify any particular subject that might be taken up thereunder and thus is not adequate notice of a closed session. Weinschenk Correspondence, December 29, 2006; Anderson Correspondence, February 13, 2007. In State ex rel. Schaeve v. Van Lare, 125 Wis. 2d 40, 47, 370 N.W.2d 271 (Ct. App. 1985), the court held that a notice to convene in closed session under Wis. Stat. § 19.85(1)(b) “‘to conduct a hearing to consider the possible discipline of a public employee’” was sufficient."
The reasons for closed session are also listed starting on page 15. The purpose of creating goals and performance standards for the city manager do not appear to apply.
However, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not looking for a legal loophole. I'm simply understanding them with good faith and under the intnet of why they were written.
Link is here:
http://www.doj.state.wi.us/AWP/2007OMCG-PRO/2007_OML_Compliance_Guide.pdf
"However, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not looking for a legal loophole."
Just to clarify- that is not a jab at Lynn Loerenson.
I was thinking about the precious city attorney when I wrote that.
I cannot spell today
That's Lorenson and previous, not precious.
Post a Comment