A hearing officer recommends the Mississippi Ethics Commission rule the Starkville Board of Aldermen violated the state’s Open Meetings Act last year by discussing a Starkville Parks and Recreation department employee’s job performance behind closed doors, a preliminary report states.
The report does not outline a penalty for the violation and allows both the city and complainant, former Starkville Chief Administrative Officer and Dispatch columnist Lynn Spruill, to file written objections to the finding.
Board attorney Chris Latimer could challenge the finding, but the decision to move forward rests with aldermen. A June hearing date is reserved if a challenge emerges.
The report also recommends the commission dismiss three other complaints filed by Spruill.
Still, Spruill said the finding is a victory for Starkville residents and government transparency.
“It highlights the need for the board of aldermen to keep the spirit of doing the public’s business in public,” she said.
The report states the board’s Jan. 6, 2015, decision to move discussions on SPR Director Herman Peter’s job performance – his handling of taxpayer funds, specifically – into executive session was inappropriate since SPR was, at the time, an autonomous entity independent of day-to-day city management.
The move to executive session, however, was “made upon the good-faith belief that the personnel matters exception applied to” the situation, the report states.
“The board could not enter executive session to discuss the management of city funds by the parks director pursuant to the personnel matters exception which the board utilized,” it states. “The record in this case evinces no bad faith on the part of the board. Nonetheless, at the time of the board’s meeting, the parks director was an employee of the parks commission and not the board.”
At the time, SPR was managed by the Starkville Park Commission, which handled its own decisions with funding, programming and other responsibilities.
Spruill alleged aldermen used the veil of personnel issues improperly – SPC was the sole authority capable of making staffing decisions, she claimed – and entered executive session “to avoid public view of the deliberations around what to do with a financially troubled park commission.”
After speaking to SPC accountant Randy Scrivner and former Personnel Director Randy Boyd behind closed doors, aldermen initiated a process to change the structure of the parks commission that led to last year’s city takeover of SPR.
In the city’s defense, Latimer noted discussions focused solely on Peters’ job performance. Entering into executive session, he argued, was proper since Peters was a city employee that handled taxpayer funds.
When the city enacted its ordinance establishing SPC, it patterned the enabling language after state statute, he wrote, but intentionally left out a section of code allowing park commissioners to fire employees.
“Thus, the city of Starkville, not park commissioners, retained the right to discharge Mr. Peters, or any other employee in the parks and recreation department,” Latimer wrote in the city’s defense. “It is difficult to imagine how the board members could have thought they had violated the Open Meetings Act…the board members did not violate the law and certainly did not knowingly or willingly violate it.”
Latimer’s defense dismissed Spruill’s filling as falling short of a “clear and convincing burden of proof” necessary to establish a violation.
It also framed Spruill as a “frequent and outspoken critic of her employer” since becoming a columnist with The Dispatch after aldermen dismissed the former CAO at the beginning of the term. Latimer also took issue with her leaking her ethics commission complaints to the newspaper.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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