The other day in my blog entitled “A little bit of this…a little bit of that” I related that Republican Senator Sylvia Allen of Snowflake, Arizona had introduced a bill whose sole intent is to gut the Arizona Open Meeting Law.
Arizona’s Open Meeting Law is designed to prevent elected officials, such as members of the Glendale city council from meeting privately and secretly to discuss actions that they will be voting upon. Allen’s bill would allow such private and secret meetings to occur without penalty.
We should all be wondering if there is any connection between the current Attorney General’s investigation of 4 Glendale city councilmembers: current councilmembers Gary Sherwood and Sammy Chavira and former councilmembers Yvonne Knaack and Manny Martinez.
The allegations surrounding these four councilmembers are centered on their actions prior to the July 3, 2013 vote of approval, by these very same four councilmembers, of the IceArizona management agreement for the city’s arena.
It was a time when then Acting City Manager Dick Bowers had sent a Memo to all councilmembers raising concerns about the deal. Allegedly in an effort to shore up a pro-IceArizona majority vote, these councilmembers met privately with IceArizona’s attorney Nick Wood right after a council executive session. Allegedly Sherwood shared executive session information with Wood and then emailed a summary of the deal’s status to Councilmember Martinez (who did not attend the private meeting) with an admonition to destroy his email. Let’s not forget now Assistant City Manager Julie Frisoni’s role in all of this. There is at least one email floating around in which she shares positive talking points of the IceArizona deal to the four supportive councilmembers exclusively. Those councilmembers who she assumed were not in support of the deal did not receive her email.
It’s awfully coincidental that while these four Glendale councilmembers remain under investigation by the Attorney General’s office, at least 4 of SB 1435’s sponsors are Glendale representatives: Senators Judy Burges, Don Shooter, Kimberly Yee and David Livingston. Senator Debbie Lesko of Peoria is also a sponsor of the bill.
You don’t suppose Sherwood had a conversation about his current difficulties with any of these sponsors? Nah…it’s just coincidental. Below is a full list of SB 1435’s sponsors:
- Sylvia Allen at sallen@azleg.gov
- Carlyle Begay at cbegay@azleg.gov
- Judy Burges at jburges@azleg.gov represents Glendale
- Rusty Bowers at rbowers@azleg.gov
- David Farnsworth at dfarnsworth@azleg.gov
- Debbie Lesko at dlesko@azleg.gov represents Peoria
- Barbara McGuire at bmcguire@azleg.gov
- Lynne Pancrazi at lpancrazi@azleg.gov
- Don Shooter at dshooter@azleg.gov represents Glendale
- Bob Worsley at bworsley@azleg.gov
- Kimberly Yee at kyee@azleg.gov represents Glendale
- Regina Cobb at rcobb@azleg.gov
- Mark Fincham@ mfincham@azleg.gov
- David Livingston@ dlivingston@azleg.gov represents Glendale
Email is an easy action nowadays. Simply copy and paste the email addresses from above. Please let them know that allowing elected officials to meet privately and secretly on legislation that will come before them will do nothing to further good government and it kills what little transparency we have. Tell them the days of secret, backroom deals are over. Kill the bill.
© Joyce Clark, 2015
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Elected City officials aside I would point out this would also allow HOA Board members…your neighbors..to discuss and make decisions relative to how you are allowed to live, alter your property, park ,spend your accessed dollars and much much more in secret. It is hard enough to get board members who morph into neighborhood Nazis off boards through the HOA election process. Now this would permit actions that may hamstring that ability.
Sounds like my HOA. I’ve been in my current HOA for three years now and have been nickel and dimed with fines over some of the most ridiculous “infractions”. Even when I had corrected the problem 48 hours prior to recieving hte notice. My neighbors are all just as frustrated, yet there’s no communications from the HOA other than the monthly bills I get.
I did get one newsletter a while back, when they announced they were increasing the fines for overnight street parking to $50 for the first offense to $100. Which is more than what many cities even charge. Yet no one got a notice prior to this being voted on.
Of course our HOA is being managed by a company based in Las Vegas with a branch office in Peoria. Most HOAs employ these companies to enforce the CCRs and they’re in it for the money.
Here’s the email I just sent to Sen. Allen and all the other sponsors of SB1435:
“Sear Sen. Allen,
In reading over SB1435 I’m quite alarmed to note that you apparently think it’s OK for a quorum of a public body to meet in secret to discuss business as long as no action is taken. This topic has garnered the opinion of several Attorneys General as it relates to the HOA open meeting law. They have all written opinions stating that a meeting occurs when a quorum of the board meets to discuss association business whether action is taken or not, and that is how the public body open meeting law should remain. I would be interested to know why you think this should change?
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I will look forward to hearing from you.”
I also sent a private email to my reps., Sen. Burges and Rep. Livingston asking them “how they could support this bill — the citizens have a right to know what’s going on before it’s a done deal! Please explain.”
It will be interesting to see how many take the time to reply!
This is what everyone should be doing! I don’t know that this bill has anything to do with the City Council investigation into purported violations of the public body open meeting law; however I have had suspicions that the State Legislature doesn’t really like citizen input on the bills they propose. They are willing to listen to the lobbyists but don’t like to give much credibility to the private citizen.
Mary Arnold
Not surprised about Judy Burges being a sponsor on this bill. She has been a sponsor on a number of other bills that have been controversial, including from 2013 SB1376 on Reproductive Technology. Thankfully this died in chambers.