Unless Starkville Board of Aldermen decides to hold a special-call meeting to address a recent Mississippi Ethics Commission decision, the city is not expected to challenge an Open Meetings Act violation. Aldermen took no action on the report Tuesday after the city was given five business days to respond to a Mississippi Ethics Commission hearing officer’s recommendation that the MEC rule Starkville violated the laws governing executive sessions last year.
The preliminary report was dated Friday and city officials confirmed receiving it Monday.
Board attorney Chris Latimer and the complainant, former Starkville Chief Administrative Officer and Dispatch columnist Lynn Spruill, could challenge the order within the five-day period, but a board order is required to start the city’s objection. Since aldermen failed to take that action Tuesday, and since the recommendation does not spell out a specific penalty for the violation, it is likely Starkville will not challenge the ruling. A June hearing date is reserved if either party chooses to initiate a challenge.
Since receiving the preliminary report, no city official has commented on the matter. Alderman did not discuss it during Tuesday’s meeting.
Starkville violated the Open Meeting Act on Jan. 6, 2015, the report states, when alderman moved discussions on Starkville Parks and Recreation Director Herman Peters’ job performance – his handling of taxpayer funds, specifically – into executive session. The move, the report states, was inappropriate because SPR was, at the time, an autonomous entity independent of day-to-day city management.
The move, however, was “made upon the good-faith belief that the personnel matters exception applied to” the situation, the report states, since aldermen believed they could tend to SPR’s personnel matters.
SPR was, at the time, managed by the Starkville Park Commission, which handled its own decisions about funding, programming and other day-to-day functions.
Spruill alleged aldermen used the veil of personnel issues improperly “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 last year behind closed doors, alderman initiated a process to change the structure of the parks commission that led to the city takeover of the department. Latimer’s defense noted discussions focused solely on Peters’ job performance, dismissed Spruill’s filing as falling short of a “clear and convincing burden of proof” necessary to establish a violation and framed the former CAO as a “frequent and outspoken critic of her (former) employer” since she was dismissed by the board in the beginning of the term. It also took issue with Spruill leaking ethics complaints to the newspaper.
On Monday, Spruill said the MEC’s ruling was a victory for Starkville residents since it “highlights the need for the board of aldermen to keep the spirit of doing the public’s business in public.”
The MEC’s preliminary report recommends the board dismiss three other complaints against the city’s former resolution of equality for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender employees and the city’s former plus-one insurance option, which extended cover to employees same-sex partners before the United States Supreme Court legalized marriage equality last year.
The court’s decision rendered the board’s dismantling of the plus-one insurance option moot, and city employees have the option to purchase insurance coverage for their spouses, no matter their sex.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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