By Michael Jonas
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/04/16/how_many_city_councilors_does_it_take_to_flout_the_law/

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How many city councilors does it take to flout the law?

   By Michael Jonas  |  April 16, 2006

   The Big Apple Circus is playing to big crowds on City
   Hall Plaza. But a reading of Suffolk Superior Court
   Judge Nancy Staffier Holtz's recent 20-page decision in
   a lawsuit alleging multiple violations of the state's
   Open Meeting Law by the Boston City Council makes it
   clear that the truly clownish antics have taken place
   in the nearby sideshow that councilors have been
   performing behind closed doors.

   Fed up with what they say was the repeated flouting by
   councilors of state law requiring them to conduct the
   public's business in public, three Boston residents
   filed suit last May against the council. In the end,
   with the nervy residents even acting as their own
   lawyers against the assembled might of the city law
   department, the case wasn't a fair fight: The
   citizen-litigators thrashed the council from top to
   bottomous.

   ''This isn't like detailed anti-trust law," says Kevin
   McCrea, the suit's lead plaintiff, who waged an
   unsuccessful bid for City Council last year. ''Meetings
   are supposed to be out in the open and posted. They
   weren't."

   In her decision late last month, Holtz hurls one
   stinging broadside after another at the council,
   finding that the 11 meetings that violated the Open
   Meeting Law from June 2003 to March 2005 were not
   inadvertent breaches of the statute, but ''were
   conducted in a manner which was calculated to thwart
   the presumptive rights of the public."

   She fined the council $1,000 for each violation and
   ordered it to comply with the law governing public
   access to meetings.

   Holtz said the council offered no reasons for the
   closed-door sessions -- which focused on everything
   from zoning and redevelopment matters to a case of
   accidental exposure to tularemia bacteria at a Boston
   University lab -- instead adopting an ''it's none of
   your business" stance that attempted to ''parse the
   language of the statute" to shoehorn their practices
   into compliance with its terms.

   One example of that was a brand of ''shuttle" diplomacy
   more worthy of Big Apple leading lady ''Grandma" and
   her circus crew than elected representatives. The
   council version involved moving members in and out of
   meeting rooms in such a way that there were never more
   than six councilors present at any one time, an
   apparent effort to comply with the letter of the Open
   Meeting Law by not having a council quorum of seven in
   attendance. But the law applies to any meeting to which
   the council, as a body, has been invited, regardless of
   how many councilors may be in the room at any given
   time, said Holtz, concluding that ''the Council's
   attempt to head count its way around the Open Meeting
   Law is without merit."

   Perhaps the most absurd argument the council put
   forward was that the gatherings, including sessions
   discussing an impending vote on renewal of the sweeping
   powers vested in the Boston Redevelopment Authority,
   were exempt from the Open Meeting Law because the
   council did not have authority over the topics that
   were discussed.

   ''The City Council really doesn't have the power to do
   anything, so it doesn't matter if their meetings are
   open to the public?" says Shirley Kressel, one of the
   plaintiffs. ''How pathetic is that?"

   The judge surely wasn't buying it, pointing out that
   the council had ultimate say over whether the BRA's
   powers were extended.

   City Council president Michael Flaherty said following
   the ruling that the council would explore ''whether any
   appellate issues exist."

   ''I'd like to see them take an appeal," says Kressel
   with bring-it-on bravado. She calls such talk a bluff
   designed to ''discredit the case in the public eye."

   Last week, Flaherty's office said he had no comment, on
   the advice of the city's corporation counsel.

   Deliberating over important and controversial issues in
   public is the job councilors signed up for, says
   Kressel. ''If we can't get them to obey the law and
   respect their constituents," she says, ''we ought to
   get councilors who can."

   Michael Jonas can be reached at [log in to unmask]

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