Staff Critical in Transition

Arizona Open Meeting Laws mandate open, public decision-making processes. They do that by forcing essentially all legislative and legal deliberations into public meetings with advance notice and a defined agenda that prohibits discussion of any topic not specified in advance to the public. However, they also have hidden consequences that expressly forbid many types of consultation between open meetings and make government staff positions critical to proper government function. Open meetings law is both very important and very complicated. Statements from the public in Council meetings and from some candidates in the Candidate Forum have made it clear the role of Town staff in facilitating the proper functioning of our town government is not well understood. This report will detail the necessary role of Town staff during times of Council member transition

It is a violation of law for a quorum of a legislative body to engage in shared discussion or even joint fact-finding between open meetings. An open “Town Hall” style meeting would therefore be unlawful unless three or fewer council members were in attendance. Further, the quorum does not have to be present in a single meeting; the law can be violated if a single topic is discussed separately among a total number of members that adds up to a quorum over time. That means that in the hypothetical three council member Town Hall scenario above the law would still be violated if any council member present related a Town Hall conversation to any of the four council members not in attendance.

To keep things relatively simple, in this article we will discuss only the very narrow topic of orienting new council members. First, how can a seven-person public body like the Carefree Town Council integrate three new members:

Council Member Process: It would be extremely impractical to try to educate new council members on laws, issues, and open meeting law without staff involvement. No council member could discuss any aspect of city government with all three new members without a quorum violation. Even splitting up the responsibility to have three one-on-one sessions would lead to a violation unless no one shared anything they had learned with any other council member.

Staff / Council Member Process: A much more practical method is for staff to provide the information needed by new members. In this situation, necessary information about the town’s planning function could be shared by the town planning coordinator with each of the three newcomers. This method is much easier to implement under existing law:

• Because open meeting law does not apply directly to town staff, there is no obstacle to information exchange between a qualified subject matter expert and individual council members (each can learn about planning issues from the Planning Director, future development opportunities from the Economic Development Director, water issues from the General Manager of the Water Company, and so on, without risk of open meeting violations).

• If educated individually, each new member would still be able to discuss the issues with up to two other council members before the next open council meeting.

The issues are much smaller in the case of integrating a single new member, as happened recently when Clint Miller was added to complete an unexpired council term.

When there is a single new member, it is possible to rely on council members to educate each other on issues, but it is still fraught. Though the new member could speak to whichever colleague is the best subject matter expert on each topic of concern, the law might well be violated just in conversations to determine who to talk to, and afterward even casual references among a total of four council members about the topics already covered could easily become unintentionally unlawful.

 

In contrast and as with the previous example, using staff as the primary source for communication of essential information is a much more robust process in open meeting law compliance, and can still work exactly as was outlined above

Council members recognize that the people most familiar with the intricacies of governing the town and in making decisions within the constraints of open meeting legislation in Carefree today are the staff. The staff is hired and trained to be subject matter experts, and with current term limits the average council member will generally have less than four years’ experience. Staff also has more training on Open meeting law compliance.

Town staff will meet with private citizens, and we encourage all council candidates to meet with staff before their election to shorten their learning curves should their candidacy succeed.

Carefree Unity