Cd'A urban renewal: Too much secrecy
Coeur d’Alene’s urban renewal agency, like all public bodies, is subject to Idaho’s Open Meeting Law. That law states its purpose in its first section:
“The legislature finds and declares that it is the policy of this state that the formation of public policy is public business and shall not be conducted in secret.”(1)
The Open Meeting Law requires meetings of the urban renewal agency — everyone still calls it LCDC — to be open to the public, with written notice and an agenda in advance, and written minutes afterward of what happened.(2)
The Open Meeting Law applies not just to meetings where decisions are made, but to all meetings where there is any discussion or deliberation toward a decision.(3)
LCDC, however, says the Open Meeting Law doesn’t apply to it unless a quorum — a majority — of its Board members are present. LCDC has nine members, so that means five. LCDC uses that to evade the Open Meeting Law by:
n Setting up “committees” that always have fewer than five members, and
n Keeping meaningful discussion and the de facto making of decisions in meetings of those “committees,” which are always conducted in secret.
In public, at its monthly meetings, the full Board goes through the motions of considering what are usually pretty much done deals, with the rare dissenter at a disadvantage to object. The “committee” meetings are closed, and unknown, to anyone but “committee” members (and LCDC’s executive director, Tony Berns), and there are no minutes or written record of what is said and done.
A court decision quoted by the Idaho Attorney General describes this practice as follows:
“An informal conference or caucus permits crystallization of secret decisions to a point just short of ceremonial acceptance. There is rarely any purpose to a non-public, pre-meeting conference except to conduct some part of the decisional process behind closed doors.(4)
The Idaho Attorney General frowns on this practice, saying:
The requirement that the Open Meeting Law be complied with whenever a quorum of a governing body meets to deliberate or to make a decision should not be evaded by holding smaller meetings with less than a quorum present.(5)
But that’s exactly what LCDC does with its “committees.”
One recent example is a secret “special call” meeting of LCDC’s Finance Committee arranged by executive director Berns for August 27. Notice was given only to the committee members, even though three important matters were to be discussed — Midtown, the Smoot Tech initiative, and the Park Drive area south of City Hall.
I happened to find out about it through a records request concerning Midtown. So I sent another request asking for all documents evidencing what was said and done at the meeting.
Mr. Berns’ response — there are no such documents.
In other words, LCDC’s most powerful committee met and discussed three important subjects, and there’s not one scrap of paper to indicate what they said and did.
We in Midtown have no idea what the LCDC powers said and decided about our neighborhood that day. And the Smoot Tech proposal was later sprung on everyone at LCDC’s September meeting, leaving anyone who might disagree at an informational disadvantage to respond.
Business as usual at secretive LCDC.
The Open Meeting Law already allows public bodies like LCDC to go into “executive session” — bold meetings behind closed doors — when considering any of nine subjects the legislature has determined are sensitive enough to merit secrecy.(6)
Most people would say that means that all other matters should be discussed and decided in public.
The Idaho Attorney General stresses the importance of holding open meetings on issues whenever possible:
Open meetings offer the public the chance to observe the way their government operates and to influence their government in positive and important ways. Closed meetings often can lead to distrust of governmental decisions and acts.
Remember, when in doubt, open the meeting.(7)
But not LCDC - er, “ignite cda.” Because they love doing things in secret.
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(1) IdahoCode§74-201.
(2) Idaho Code §§ 74-203, 74-204, and 74-205
(3) Idaho Code § 74-202(6); Idaho Attorney General, Idaho Open Meeting Law Manual, at p. 6.
(4) Sacramento Newspaper Guild v. Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, 69 Cal. Rptr. 480, 485 (1968), quoted in Idaho Attorney General, Idaho Open Meeting Law Manual, at p. 7.
(5) Idaho Attorney General, Idaho Open Meeting Law Manual, at p. 8.
(6) Idaho Code § 74-206(1), And see section 74-206(3)(“The exceptions to the general policy in favor of open meetings shall be narrowly construed.”).
(7) Idaho Attorney General, Idaho Open Meeting Law Manual, at p. 1.
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David Lyons is a Coeur d’Alene resident.