Presiding Commissioner explained to Carthage Press Managing Editor John Hacker how he and his fellow commissioners made their choices:
Presiding Commissioner John Bartosh said he was not ready to announce on Wednesday who they appointed, but they followed the state's Open Meetings/ Open Records Act in making the appointment.
“We knew that we couldn't all go talk to people because that would be in violation of the Sunshine Law,” Bartosh said. “So we all had people we were interested in putting on the board and we asked Commissioner Adams to go talk to them. He came back to us and these are who we've picked. Jim Honey had some, I had some, Darieus had some and I just don't know how many candidates we had. We all had people we wanted and we had Darieus go talk and that's who we got.”
What Bartosh failed to mention is that the deliberations and the process the commissioners went through to arrive at their choices was not posted and therefore could be a violation of the Sunshine Law.
10 comments:
Sunshine Law? We don't need no stinking Sunshine Law.
Notice of meetings, when required--recording of meetings to be allowed, guidelines, penalty--accessibility of meetings--minutes of meetings to be kept, content--voting records to be included.
610.020. 1. All public governmental bodies shall give notice of the time, date, and place of each meeting, and its tentative agenda, in a manner reasonably calculated to advise the public of the matters to be considered, and if the meeting will be conducted by telephone or other electronic means, the notice of the meeting shall identify the mode by which the meeting will be conducted and the designated location where the public may observe and attend the meeting. If a public body plans to meet by internet chat, internet message board, or other computer link, it shall post a notice of the meeting on its website in addition to its principal office and shall notify the public how to access that meeting. Reasonable notice shall include making available copies of the notice to any representative of the news media who requests notice of meetings of a particular public governmental body concurrent with the notice being made available to the members of the particular governmental body and posting the notice on a bulletin board or other prominent place which is easily accessible to the public and clearly designated for that purpose at the principal office of the body holding the meeting, or if no such office exists, at the building in which the meeting is to be held.
Violations--remedies, procedure, penalty, purposeful violations--validity of actions by governing bodies in violation--governmental bodies may seek interpretation of law, attorney general to provide.
4. Upon a finding by a preponderance of the evidence that a public governmental body or a member of a public governmental body has purposely violated sections 610.010 to 610.026, the public governmental body or the member shall be subject to a civil penalty in an amount up to five thousand dollars. If the court finds that there was a purposeful violation of sections 610.010 to 610.026, then the court shall order the payment by such body or member of all costs and reasonable attorney fees to any party successfully establishing such a violation. The court shall determine the amount of the penalty by taking into account the size of the jurisdiction, the seriousness of the offense, and whether the public governmental body or member of a public governmental body has violated sections 610.010 to 610.026 previously.
Great plan there, Commissioner Bartosh, have the guy with the greatest conflict of interest go talk to all the people the three of you want on the BoE.
Bartosh said commissioners also plan to discuss their selection procedures during their meeting; he declined to elaborate Wednesday on those procedures.
"We contacted people, and they agreed to help us out," he said. When asked how commissioners located the individuals who will be named as appointees, he said: "WE HAVE OUR WAYS. YOU'LL FIND THAT OUT TOMORROW."
Mr.Turner be watching the news, this information should change after today's events.....
I'll be sharpening the pitchforks then.
It will be CART or JPC team members, the commission picks from a small group, I have a brother who was picked by the commissioners for two different boards he serves on, Dankelson and him are buddies and Dean has a big voice in Carthage.
Out of the three new board members, it is reasonable to believe that at least one's thinking would match up with Koch, Martucci, and Fort.
Alas, if all three members end up aligned with Banwart, then indeed "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark".
No public hearings, why would anybody think the public should have a say.
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