The Derby tax board’s practice of not making minutes available to the public within seven days of a meeting doesn’t jive with the public’s right to know, according to two experts on the state’s open government laws.
Earlier this month, the Valley Indy reported that no minutes were available in the Derby Town Clerk’s office for any tax board budget meetings dating back to February.
While minutes were available for the board’s monthly meetings, there was no record of any of the seven additional budget meetings held by the tax board.
By law, minutes are supposed to be available to the public within seven days.
During the budget meetings, various city department heads make presentations to the 10-member elected tax board to justify their use of the public’s money. It’s a crucial part to the city’s annual budget process.
On May 6, based on the previous presentations and discussions, the Derby tax board adopted a preliminary, $38.3 million budget that carries a 1.2 percent tax increase.
After the meeting adjourned, Jim Butler, the tax board chairman, defended his board’s policy of not making meeting minutes from budget discussions available to the public.
Butler said he’s been taking meeting minutes but not giving them to the town clerk because the discussions are considered a single, continuous meeting.
Minutes do not have to be made available until the tax board votes on a preliminary budget, Butler said.
Butler did not author the policy. The chairman noted this is the procedure Derby has been practicing for years, under various administrations.
Click here to listen to a podcast with former tax board member Rick Dunne, who defended the practice and elaborated on the reasons for it.
“Every year the same procedure is done. When the workshops are over, the paperwork is turned into the town clerk’s office, the minutes are typed up and they are part of the file,” Butler said.
That means the latest Derby tax board meeting lasted 62 days over nine sessions.
Butler said anyone wishing to look at the minutes simply should have contacted him. However, that does not conform to the state’s FOI Act, which says the minutes must be available for public inspection during regular business hours in the clerk’s office.
Click the play button below to listen to Butler’s remarks.
’Weak’
Minutes are required by state law for a number of reasons. Minutes provide a level of accountability. They open government to the people who aren’t in the room where the meeting was held. They act as the official record of a meeting, under the law.
William S. Fish is a lawyer with Hinkley, Allen and Snyder, LLP in Hartford. He is an expert on the state’s Freedom of Information Act, having prepared “Open Government Guide: Access to Public Records and Meetings in Connecticut.” Click here to download a copy.
Fish said by following the tax board’s theory to its conclusion, the board could continue all meetings indefinitely, then arbitrarily decide when to release minutes.
Fish said the FOI Act clearly defines when minutes are to be made available. Records of votes are to be made public in the town clerk’s office in two days. Minutes of meetings within seven days.
“Based on what you described to me, this does not sound like a proper implementation of the Freedom of Information Act,” Fish said.
Thomas Hennick, the public education officer for the Freedom of Information Commission, also questioned the tax board’s policy under state law, calling it “weak.”
“I don’t know, if challenged, whether (Derby’s policy) would hold up,” Hennick said. “It seems to me each workshop is a separate entity unto itself. It should be noticed, and open, with minutes for each one.”
Despite Butler’s contention that the minutes don’t need to be filed until after the tax board votes on a preliminary budget, this month the tax board did not follow its own policy on minutes.
The minutes dating back to March were given to the town clerk May 6 at 1:30 p.m. — six hours before the board actually voted on a preliminary budget. The tax board often records audio from its meetings, but the minutes do not reference whether audio recordings exist.
On a side note, it should be noted that minutes from nine budget workshops from 2013 weren’t officially time-stamped by the town clerk until May 6, 2014, a year after the meetings ended.
Even if one accepts that Derby’s nine budget meetings of 2014 are a continuous, single meeting, the tax board still isn’t following the law when it comes to adjourning and continuing meetings.
Hennick explained that when a meeting is adjourned but is to be continued, the minutes should reflect the precise time and place of the next meeting, and the next meeting should be noticed as a continuation of the previous meeting.
The minutes from the tax board budget meetings handed in May 6 contain none of the required information.
“They can’t have it both ways,” Hennick said. “If they want it to be one long continuous meeting, which I think is really thin, they would indeed have to say ‘We adjourn this meeting until,’ whatever the next meeting date is. That would have to be in there. There must be an agenda that indicates they are going to continue.”
The tax or finance boards in Ansonia, Seymour and Shelton all make budget meeting minutes available. The minutes are posted on the individual town and city websites.
Kevin Blake, Derby’s corporation counsel, said last week he would have to research the Derby issue before commenting.
Mayor Anita Dugatto campaigned, in part, on a platform of transparency in Derby City Hall.
In an e‑mail May 12, the mayor said Derby is investing in technology to make government more open. Specifically, the city will be contracting for a new, official website that promises two-way communication.
“Going forward issues like this will be better managed with the new technologies we are currently putting in place,” Dugatto said in an e‑mail. “(A) new server has been delivered to City Hall. Website bid proposals were opened recently. All, so we can be more helpful to our taxpayers whom cannot be present at our public meetings.”
