Four pending ethics complaints against the Starkville Board of Aldermen charge the seven-person body with circumventing public discourse and trivializing transparency by improperly holding closed-door meetings.
The complaints, penned on behalf of former Chief Administrative Officer Lynn Spruill, ask the Mississippi Ethics Commission to investigate “an ongoing lack of respect for the need of the public to be aware of the board’s deliberations” and seek $1,000 fines upon offending members, the maximum penalty for second and subsequent violations.
Three of the four complaints are tied to a Jan. 6 executive session in which aldermen repealed the city’s non-discrimination protection to employees of the LGBT community, amended the city’s plus-one adult health insurance option to those only in state-recognized marriages and initiated a process to absorb the Starkville Parks Commission.
The fourth complaint stems from a Sept. 9 special-call meeting in which Ward 1 Alderman Ben Carver attempted to rescind the same plus-one insurance policy in a closed-door session.
Spruill last month confirmed to The Dispatch her intent to file the claims. In addition to being one of the largest property owners in the city, she also serves as a member of the Greater Starkville Development Partnership’s board of directors and as a columnist for this newspaper.
She will submit the documents to the Miss. Ethics Commission no later than next week and is seeking co-signatories for each complaint. She tweeted Monday that the documents were readily available at her office for members of the public.
Common thread
While the four complaints stem from three different policy changes, they all carry a common allegation — that Starkville aldermen improperly use executive session to hide discussions from the public.
Governing bodies are allowed to enter the closed-door session for a variety of discussions including, but not limited to: personnel matters, including job performance, character, potential competence or physical and mental health of a person holding a specific job; strategy and negotiation sessions in regard to prospective litigation, litigation or the issuance of an appealable order when an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the public body; investigations into misconduct; cases of extraordinary emergency; and prospective land purchases, sales or leases.
Board members first must hold closed-door discussions to determine the need for full executive session talks. The reasoning behind an executive-session move must be presented to the public, and closed-door discussions must remain on the topic for which the session was called.
On Jan. 6, aldermen entered executive session to discuss the inclusion statement and plus-one insurance option on the grounds of potential litigation. The night’s public agenda, as presented to the public and approved at the table, listed potential litigation, pending litigation, property acquisition and personnel as executive session discussions. Specific topics were not listed.
Behind closed doors, Vice Mayor Roy A. Perkins offered separate motions to gut the two policies, which were both seconded by Ward 2 Alderman Lisa Wynn, the same representative who previously allowed Mayor Parker Wiseman’s veto to stand, thereby ensuring the plus-one offering survived a September challenge.
Perkins, city documents show, also called for a vote to close debate on the topics.
Ward 3 Alderman David Little, Ward 7 Alderman Henry Vaughn and Carver joined Perkins and Wynn to amend the policies.
A second Wiseman veto was overturned Jan. 20 by the same bloc.
Discussions on the veto and its subsequent vote were held in public that day, and two aldermen — Ward 4’s Jason Walker and Ward 5’s Scott Maynard — blasted their peers for the upheaval created by the executive session decisions.
In that meeting, Walker said the board’s vote to go behind closed doors on Jan. 6 was, at best, a stretch of the law.
“I believe (the potential litigation) excuse is a fabrication,” Walker said on Jan. 20. “I asked who (the potential litigant was) and there was no answer to that question because they couldn’t give an answer. If you want to have this discussion, it should be right here before (the public). You don’t hide in executive session over something that is a stretch at best.”
Spruill’s claims cite Walker’s outrage at his peers and say the board’s claim of potential litigation was inadequate and done to hide public discussions.
Spruill, in the complaints, also alleges a lack of public discourse from the members of the board that voted to override Wiseman’s second veto indicates “that all discussions relevant to this topic had illegitimately occurred” during the Jan. 6 executive session.
Not the first complaint
A 2014 Open Meetings Act violation claim made similar allegations and has yet to be addressed by the Miss. Ethics Commission.
“An examination of the meetings of the board of aldermen … will reflect a pattern and practice of board members making motions, seconding the motions and voting without discussions on matters which are significant enough that discussion would be reasonable,” Spruill writes in the Jan. 6 plus-one insurance claim, “but for the fact that the decisions have been made prior to the board meeting and in private.
“The complainant believes that this pattern is continued through the use of the executive session as a means to evade public scrutiny and comment, and that the meeting of Jan. 6 … is the most blatant example of that use,” she continues in the claim. “This belief was confirmed by the statements of both Alderman Maynard and Alderman Walker at the meeting in which the mayor’s veto was overridden.”
After aldermen unanimously approved the city’s new insurance policy in September, an action that granted health care coverage to dependent adults of employees’ choosing, a group that could include their same-sex partners, Carver, in a special-call meeting, attempted to rescind the “employee-plus-one adult” provision during executive session.
The board went behind closed doors on the grounds of potential litigation. Carver’s motion died at the table without a second.
“Upon information and belief, there was no discussion of a particular individual or employee holding a specific position as required in (Miss. Code),” Spruill wrote in that meeting’s corresponding claim.
“The complainant submits that this agenda item was a ruse to take the matter up in executive session so as not to allow the public a view into the decision-making process,” Spruill’s complaint states. “As further evidence of the desire to limit visibility and reduce the public scrutiny of their discussions and decisions, this meeting was taken up as a special-call meeting. There was no emergency or situation that would have created a disadvantage to the city if the subject matter of this meeting had waited until the regularly scheduled recess meeting seven days following on Sept. 16, 2014.”
In following meetings, members of the public and board of aldermen weighed in on the plus-one insurance option. Members of the city’s religious community opposed to it and Starkville’s statement of inclusion, along with LGBT rights advocates, spent the majority of two meetings’ public comment sessions stumping their respective positions.
Discussions between aldermen at the table were also held in the public’s purview.
Parks Commission
As for the complaint against the board’s handling of SPC’s takeover, Spruill wrote the move to discuss the matter behind closed doors again was improper because, at the time, SPC was an independent board.
That autonomy, she wrote, should have prevented the city’s discussions on job performances since Parks’ employees then served at the will and pleasure of SPC.
“The use of a personnel matter to enter executive session was a pretense to avoid public view of the deliberations around what to do with a financially troubled park commission. The board of aldermen clearly did not want to share their reasoning and concerns about amending the city ordinance…creating the structure of the Park Commission,” Spruill wrote. “Upon information and belief, the discussion did not include any matters related to job performance … of a person holding a specific position as required by (state law). There ensued no discussion…involving an individual in the employ of the city.”
Carver and Walker attempted to take the discussions back into open session but were defeated by their peers.
“Using the executive session as pretext to avoid discussing substantive issues in full view of the public is contrary to public policy,” the claim states.
Aldermen conducted January’s policy changes to avoid negative reaction and bypass the public’s ability to protest the action, Spruill’s writings imply. The board’s actions are “emblematic of the ingrained belief by the members of the board that anything goes in executive session” and “a blatant and willful disregard for the spirt, the intent and the language of the Open Meetings Act,” she wrote.
“I believe that some members of this board of aldermen will not be influenced or dissuaded from their continued course of action by any finding other than that of a second violation and personal accountability,” her claims state.
Miss. Code 25-41-1 states open deliberations of public bodies in regard to policy decisions are “essential to the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government and to the maintenance of a democratic society.”
Two complaints were levied against the board and Vaughn last spring after a contentious school board appointment.
An Open Meetings Act complaint focused on Wynn’s comments after the board appointed Juliette Weaver-Reese to a five-year Starkville School District Board of Trustees seat. Former SSD Board President Eddie Myles was denied re-appointment after he missed a deadline to declare his intentions.
“Sometimes as board members, we have to make decisions behind the scenes that some of you may not understand, and they are quite difficult. Tonight was one of those,” Wynn said on Feb. 18, 2014.
An ethics complaint was filed against Vaughn after he failed to recuse himself from the vote. At the time, Vaughn had a relative who worked for SSD. He told The Dispatch after the meeting that his daughter worked for the system, but he participated in the vote anyway since she did not live with him.
Both Maynard and Walker recused themselves from the entire matter since they also have relatives that work for the school district.
Vaughn was previously warned by the ethics commission not to participate in SSD-related votes or discussions.
The city’s defense in its Open Meetings Act claim was simple: Wynn misspoke, the board does not conduct secret meetings, and its seven members do not know how each other will vote prior to the start of meetings.
It also painted the complainant, former mayoral candidate Mary Lee Beal, as a political dissident disgruntled by her failed election bid.
Spruill was ousted as Starkville’s CAO during the first meeting of the board’s term, which started in July 2013. At the time, aldermen made few comments as to why they fired the long-serving administrator.
In a tip of the hat to Beal’s filing, Spruill wrote she isn’t “interested in or concerned with retribution” for the personnel move.
“My sole purpose is for this board to cease and desist their ongoing pattern of flagrant disregard for the value and sanctity of the process of an open government,” her claims state.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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