Did a group of city commissioners violate the Texas Open Meetings Act?
Three Brownsville city commissioners who attended an early November meeting not opened to the public maintain that they did not violate the Texas Open Meetings Act.
The Nov. 5 meeting was called to discuss the implementation of the city’s master plan called Imagine Brownsville. The commissioners asserted that no decisions were made and that the City Commission would have the final word on the plan’s implementation.
"It was a planning session on the viability of an organizational structure," Commissioner Anthony P. Troiani said of session billed as a meeting of the Imagine Brownsville Comprehensive Plan Coordinating Board Executive Committee.
"Nothing was set in stone," Commissioner Rose M. Z. Gowen, who also attended, pointed out.
"It wasn’t a meeting," Commissioner Charlie Atkinson said. "It was like a muster," Atkinson added, noting that the session was not held in violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act (TOMA). "Nah, (a violation) does not exist."
TOMA generally applies when a quorum of a governmental body is present and discusses public business, according to written guidance from the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s open government division. TOMA prohibits a quorum of a governmental body from deliberating outside of an open meeting. A quorum of the City Commission would be the majority of the governing body or four commission members.
The presence of three commissioners at the Nov. 5 meeting was just one commissioner short of establishing a quorum of the City Commission, which would have made the session subject to TOMA and the requirement of notice to the public.
Troiani said it was not deliberate to keep the presence of city commissioners under a quorum.
"I don’t think it was intentional. I didn’t know it was going to happen (that two other commissioners would be there). It didn’t bother me because I didn’t think it was an issue," Troiani added.
"I am not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t see conspiracies lurking around in every corner," said Troiani, who noted that the session was nothing more than a planning effort to "facilitate communication with other entities."
Gowen said that there was "nothing sinister" about the planning group’s session.
She added that the planning session was to "get all the ducks in a row" or "the marbles in the right bag," in order to make sure that all the governmental entities are going in the right direction to implement the Imagine Brownsville master plan. "There were no policies adopted or votes," Gowen said.
Atkinson noted, "We met informally and fixed things that were wrong with it (the proposed budget for the CPCB)."
The agenda for the Nov. 5 meeting called for discussion and possible action regarding the United Brownsville Memorandum of Understanding, which establishes the CPCB’s executive committee, task force, and technical support group.
The agenda also called for discussion and action regarding the United Brownsville Proclamation, which establishes the leadership of the CPCB’s executive committee. The committee would be comprised of representatives from the city, Greater Brownsville Incentives Corp., Brownsville Community Improvement Corp., Brownsville Public Utilities Board, Brownsville Navigation District, Brownsville Independent School District, and the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College.
The purpose of the executive committee is to provide final approval of the phasing, funding and implementation of improvements and initiatives recommended by the task force and to forward those recommendations to the corresponding public entities responsible for implementation, according to the Memorandum of Understanding.
The Memorandum of Understanding, the proclamation and a proposed budget are being presented to all the entities for consideration.
The AG’s 2010 Open Meetings Act Handbook points out that generally, meetings of less than a quorum of a governmental body are not subject to TOMA. However, the handbook also says that when a governmental body appoints a committee that includes less than a quorum of the parent body and grants it authority to supervise or control public business or public policy, the committee may itself be a "governmental body" subject to TOMA.
Troiani said that the planning group or executive committee, as it was identified on the agenda, doesn’t have any governmental effect at this point. "It is not a governmental entity," he said.
Despite the Nov. 5 group calling itself the CPCB Executive Committee, not all of the entities have approved the Memorandum of Understanding establishing such a committee.
