Cleveland Real Estate News

If you haven’t already done so, check out the wonderful Charter Review Commission blog set up by Bill Callahan. It is an exhaustive list of everything being discussed, researched and debated, as well as an accounting of minutes from the public meetings that were held. Bill posted the final recommendations (pdf) and the idea of executive sessions is discussed briefly by Robert Triozzi, Cleveland’s Law Director on page 16. Council will decide within a week whether this issue should go on the ballot.

 

One of the items being discussed was reported on in today’s PD by Henry Gomez. Adding Executive (or closed to the public) sessions for certain types of discussions. I can think of reasons why an executive session should be allowed but considering the back room quality of our County practices I wasn’t as thrilled with Triozzi’s rationale here: “We just felt our council should have the same ability as the county commissioners,” said Triozzi, who sat on the panel and voted to recommend the charter change….”

 

It’s hard to compare Rockville Maryland (with a much smaller population) but I bring it up since I have experience as a neighborhood organizer with that political system. The Mayor and Council held executive sessions, including but not limited to discussions on specific employee issues. Since there was always a report about what transpired in executive session at the next public/regular M and Council meeting, it wasn’t a problem. Especially since we had a mandated time at each meeting for public comments.

 

To me the key is that minutes from all* executive sessions be made available on the website. My asterisk is because I can see why true homeland security issues might not need detailed minutes but just discussing the fact that a meeting about it occurred and what kind of issues were discussed surrounding that topic could still be made public. When I lived in Rockville and was active, you could get paper copies of any meeting from City Hall. Now of course we have the Internet so it becomes even easier for us to do it here. Making minutes available could cut down on the abuse issue.

 

How do you feel about this other issue raised, that reporters should be allowed into an executive session? Here is an editorial from Tacoma Washington’s Tribune about the pros and cons. This is a detailed discussion, from The Olympian in the state of Washington on taping executive sessions.  

 

Here is a link to a Hagerstown Maryland executive session minutes/report so you can see some of the issues they discuss in ES. Here is an excerpt I’m including because litigation issues (to me) qualify as ES material:

 

 

 

As always, would love your thoughts on this issue.  Peace Out – 3C

 

Saturday Update: I asked Bill Callahan, and he kindly provided, the specific links and issues we can examine regarding executive session (thank you Bill!):

Carole, the discussion of the executive session proposal took place on April 24.

http://www.clevelandcitycouncil.org/Home/CharterReviewCommission/CharterReview42408/tabid/480/Default.aspx

The staff’s notes aren’t especially informative or complete but in this case I don’t think they missed any big debate.  The key issues raised were:
 
a) Is this an open-ended permission to close sessions? (A: No, the topics and circumstances for legislative executive sessions would become those set specifically by state law, i.e. the “Sunshine Law”. See http://www.ag.state.oh.us/legal/sunshine.asp.)

b) Can any actual decisions be made in executive session? (A: No.)

c) Does discussion in executive session allow any change in the public status of documents? (A: No, the City already operates under the state’s public records law and this proposal has no effect on that.)

Bill