Council Challenge: Vote No on Budget Closed Session

Members of the Hyattsville City Council should vote against any plan which would shut the public out of discussions surrounding a contentious budget discrepancy which reared its head at the most recent council meeting.

For those unaware, a bit of a recap is in order. 

You see, during Monday's city council meeting,  called for in the city's omnibus 2013 budget ordinance. He was critical of a new budget provision which would have designated two corporals in the police department as acting positions, as opposed to permanent positions. 

Mayor Marc Tartaro responded to Holland's comments, saying that the public did not have the full story behind the changes. He then went on to suggest that if the council was unable to approve a budget that night () then further discussion about the nature of the police employee classification should take place behind closed doors. 

Tartaro's reasoning behind such a move is suspect. 

Noting that the debate centered on whether next year's budgetary personnel counts listed two police positions as acting or permanent posts, Tartaro argued that an enterprising individual could identify the police officers who would be affected by a decision in this area. Thus, said Tartaro in a brief interview as he stepped away from Monday's meeting for a drink, the council could go into closed session to avoid the public discussion of personnel matters, as allowed by the Maryland Open Meetings Act. 

However, Tartaro's interpretation of the Open Meetings Act's closed session provisions is overly broad. Yes, the law allows for closed sessions to discuss personnel matters. But the closed session exception only extends to discussions of specific personnel, according to Maryland's Open Meetings Act Manual, published by the Maryland Attorney General. 

"Like the other exceptions, this one is to be construed narrowly. It is inapplicable to discussions of issues affecting classes of public employees, as distinct from specific individuals," reads the manual. "Thus, the Compliance Board has held that this exception is not a basis to close a session to discuss matters  such as agency consolidations or outsourcing services. The exceptions only extends to discussions pertaining to specific personnel."

Further, a 2003 decision by the Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board found the Salisbury City Council to be in violation of the act when they met in closed session to discuss, among other topics, pay grade changes for two positions in that city's public works department. Is this not similar to changing the acting/full time status of two corporals?

In their decision, the compliance board wrote "to be sure, if a public body decides to give a raise to a category of employees, described in terms of the positions that they hold, those who know that a particular individual holds one of those positions will also know that the individual is going to get the raise. But that is not a personnel matter affecting the specific individual, within the meaning of the exception, because the decision about the raise bears no relation to the performance or other attributes of the individual employee."

Here, the issue of how many acting or full time police corporals the city has in its patrol division is a discussion affecting an entire class of employees. These are not specific personnel issues. These are budget issues. 

And, might I add, budget issues which were previously discussed in open session when the city council approved ] police department budget back in April. 

Further, the city council held extensive discussions about the personnel counts for the city's Code Enforcement Officer when debating whether or not parking enforcement should be moved into that office. Those debates were even more specific, focusing on the capacity of a single code enforcement supervisor to manage additional duties. 

Why, then, did Mayor Tartaro not ask for those discussions to be held in closed session?

One of the more disquieting tendencies of the Hyattsville City Council, and Mayor Marc Tartaro in particular, is the willingness to jump into closed session. As we have previously reported, the city council spends a great deal of time behind closed doors. In 2011 alone, the

It'd be nice if just once, a member of the city council (or, dare say, a majority), would take a more critical eye towards this and other closed sessions. 

If the council does go into closed session to discuss the police budget, they can expect an objection from me, at the very least.