The drip, drip of records related to the city’s Shredgate scandal continued this week with the city’s release of minutes, a transcript and an audio recording of an hour-long city council executive session held on May 7, 2013. The council, ostensibly, met in private because they were discussing collective bargaining, personnel and pending litigation, but a review of the materials shows the main topic of discussion was dirty laundry. There was virtually no discussion of legal strategy, and it took nearly 50 minutes before Ward 2 Ald. Gail Simpson asked about the city’s chances in a lawsuit filed over the illegal destruction of internal affairs files. The council received a primer on how changes to labor contracts are negotiated but did not discuss any pending contract negotiations. City officials also talked about who was responsible for the shredding and said that the names of public employees who participated in shredding discussions before the fact should be kept secret. And they spent a lot of time talking about media leaks and how bad the whole thing looked. Listening to the confab, it’s difficult to find a reason why this meeting should have been held behind closed doors. Discussing violations of open records laws is not exempt from open meetings laws. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2015.
