Who's
Meeting is This, Anyway?
Reported by Bill
Kelly, STATEWIDE Correspondent
School boards, city councils, county supervisors, Ag societies, cemetery boards.
They make the rules and they spend your money, and state law... the open meetings
law... requires that they do it right before your eyes.
[Alan Peterson, Media Attorney:] "The idea of an open
meeting is more than popular. It's almost a principle that everyone signs on
to and have for many years. Open government is Mother and apple pie as far as
a government principle."
According to Alan Peterson, attorney for reporters and advisor
to local government, a good many boards need a reminder about the open part
of the open meetings law.
[Peterson:] "It is in fact, as the name suggests, an
open meeting. The doors are open. People can come in. People don't have to identify
themselves when they come in . They can sit and listen to all or part of the
meeting. And they can put their hand up and asked to be heard by the governing
body."
They've gotten a crash course in the open meetings law in
Scottsbluff County, where an often over looked board responsible for rural fire
protection preferred to conduct it's business...we'll say... discreetly.
[Harlan Brown, SB Rural District Fire Chief:] "I've been
trying to keep it the less said the better." [Kelly:] "Safer that
way?"
[Brown:] "Sometimes safer that way. yep."
Harlan Brown knows a lot about wool. Making yarn, not law,
is his business. But Harlan has also been chair of the fire district almost
since it was first set up 30 years ago.
[Brown:] "We meet once a month. Why up until a couple
years ago we met twice a year. No problem. Pay the bills when they come in.
Draw the money out of the courthouse. Keep the finances in order. Fairly simple."
[Kelly:] "I get the impression you'd just as soon not
have much attention paid to this board."
[Brown:] "No. Its not been a problem. Till just lately."
Just lately, some people started thinking the fire district didn't have the
kind of modern equipment or training needed to protect homes and businesses
in the county. The district's fire truck has only 17 thousand miles on it, but
it's out dated and it leaks.
[Chief Jon Surbeck, Scottsbluff City Fire Dept.:] "We're
dealing with, to me, a very critical issue -- life safety and property conservation."
Jon Surbeck, the Scottsbluff City fire chief, has an interest
in the subject. The taxes collected from rural property owners pay for the service,
and the equipment used by the city squad and district volunteers. The city chief
also serving as rural chief, should attend meetings and offer professional advice.
He's rarely invited.
[Surbeck:] "It would be suffice to say that its been
a challenging relationship, and communication has not occurred in a free flowing
fashion.
[Kelly:] "Are there meetings that you should have been
in attendance, that you didn't even know were occurring?"
[Surbeck:] "It would certainly appear so."
[Dan Murphy:] "And
I have in my short tenure on that board have actually participated in a meeting
that was known up front, hadn't been advertised at all."
Dan Murphy used to be on the board. He was an elected member,
serving as a private citizen. He also happened to be a Scottsbluff City fire
fighter. That caused some friction on the board. Some felt he had a conflict
of interest. Murphy felt the board had some serious problems with openness.
[Murphy:] "And when I challenged the board, that for
our own protection, we should maybe not conduct the meeting until we've had
time to properly advertise it, there response was, 'Well, everybody's busy and
its hard to get everybody together anyway, and we have some business to attend
to, so, since we're already here we'll just go ahead and have the meeting any
way.' "
[Kelly:] "And that's the public's business at that point?"
[Murphy:] "Absolutely."
Like the meeting at Hardee's when four of the board members
were spotted having coffee, and talking business.
[Brown:] "Well, for awhile, a couple of us would happen
to drink coffee in the same place and they'd say, oh you're having an illegal
meeting.
[Kelly:] "Is that an illegal meeting?"
[Brown:] "It's not. When you get down to a reading of
the law, its says you can have a chance meeting. It doesn't count."
[Kelly:] "And four of you just happened to show up there
and..."
[Brown:] "Well, yeah. At one time and we might have talked
about baling hay and cutting beans and the fire truck too, and stuff like that."
[Lynn Monson, Scottsbluff
Star Herald:] "As far as we can tell, these folks have not maliciously
violated the law. I think its just that over the years a number of the long
standing board members have developed a way of doing business."
That way of doing business attracted the attention of the
Scottsbluff Star Herald when they started covering the debate over the
out-of-date fire truck. Reporter Le Templar wanted to review the districts budget
and finances, but the board at first refused to let him see their records...
violating another important part of Nebraska's open government laws.
His articles revealed the board was not legally advertising
meetings. After the article ran, the board voted to stop running its legal notice
in the Star Herald, with its county wide circulation. Meeting notices would
appear in a tiny farm business paper, instead.
[Murphy:] "The board, for whatever reason felt that there
was a certain amount of uncomfortability or uncontrolability in conducting a
meeting in front of a large group of their constituents, so they purposely elected
to advertise in a lesser known publication.
[Kelly:] "They didn't want to take the heat."
[Murphy:] "Absolutely."
[Kelly:] "So they keep the public out."
[Murphy:] "And they admitted that."
[Kelly:] "Do you need to put everyone of your meetings in the paper?"
[Brown:] "I didn't think you did. If they want to come
they can call me and ask me when the meeting is going to be. And up until lately
we never had reporters at our meeting."
[Kelly:] "Would you just as soon they not show up?"
[Brown:] "I'd just as soon they weren't there."
[Kelly:] "Why is that?"
[Brown:] "It bothers me. It probably shouldn't. It probably
shouldn't It just makes me nervous."
[Kelly:] "Why is that?"
[Brown:] "I guess I can't give you a good reason. Just
let us conduct our business without somebody right there."
[Kelly:] "Being nosy?"
[Brown:] "Nosy . Yeah. And they put it in the paper and
it never comes out right."
The Star Herald
editorial writers blasted the fire district for its "complete disregard
for how a public society and one of its agencies are supposed to function."
[Monson:] "It often times comes down to the nasty old
newspaper or the television station or whoever that's raising the ruckus. Well,
whenever we're raising a ruckus, we're just representing the public."
[Kevin Mooney, KNEB News Director:] "They've been meeting
whenever they've wanted to meet. They haven't published any notices anywhere,
to speak of."
The news director over at KNEB, a veteran who's covered lots
of local government meetings around Scottsbluff, had never quite seen a board
operate this way before.
[Mooney:] "Even the meeting I went to a month ago, after
all this was raised, there was no agenda as you came in. The only agenda that
anyone had was the one chairman Harlan Brown agenda, that was on a little piece
of paper in his notebook, and on the agenda next is this. No one had a copy
of that. He was the only one who did. That is an example of how they ran their
meetings all these years."
[Murphy at a Board
Meeting:] "I would seriously challenge the election of every member of
this board...."
There was no formal agenda available the night over a hundred
concerned fire district taxpayers crammed into the normally sedate meeting hall
back in August. The meeting dissolved in chaos when the board abruptly announced
that two of it's members, including dissident Dan Murphy, had been elected improperly
and were immediately removed from the board.
[Murphy:] "I feel this meeting tonight was the biggest
travesty of justice, and the biggest misrepresentation of the public trust that
I've ever been witness too."
Murphy's complaints about the conduct of the board did not
result in any investigation by the county attorney.
[Murphy:] "County attorneys wont go to trouble and expense."
[Moody:] "There's no penalty. There's no fine. There's
no provision for disqualification. There's none of that. So what are you going
to do if they don't publish notice."
The paper ran another editorial, asking for a review of the
laws governing fire districts. Harlan Brown promised he'd do better. But then....
[Monson:] "Now just this Saturday they had another meeting,
and didn't give us proper notice. As a member of the public."
[Kelly:] "What does that tell you?)"
[Monson:] "Well, that tells us that they're not getting
the message that if you're going to conduct public there are certain rules you
have to follow."
Harlan Brown called it an emergency meeting, and claimed he'd
done his best to contact the news media.
[Kelly:] "I get the impression that it didn't break your
heart that they weren't there."
[Brown:] "Why else would I call an emergency meeting?"
Now, if you think
this is an isolated incident ...just one little board... think again. Attorney
Alan Peterson hears from the news media by way of an open meetings hot line.
[Peterson:] "No there's not a current plague. There's
an ongoing problem and a need for continued enforcement."
In just the past year, over a dozen cases of boards and councils
meeting in secret have made their way onto the pages of Nebraska newspapers.
And these are just the one's somebody found out about.
For STATEWIDE, I'm Bill Kelly
Captioning by Nebraska
Captioning Center, Lincoln, Nebraska .
STATEWIDE is funded in part by the Shoemaker Family Foundation of Cambridge,
Nebraska building bridges of understanding between rural and urban Nebraska
through its support of STATEWIDE news programming.
