The council members for the 2010-2011 term were sworn in on January 5th at 7 pm. It was a well attended event, with many family members and city administrators/employees present.
Honored guests, Judge Mary Kay Bozza, Judge Colleen O’Toole and State Rep. Matt Dolan conducted the swearing-in.
As a surprise, Council President Scott Mills asked his youngest daughter to hold the Bible for him. That made for a very charming scene.
The Special Meeting
Although the night was intended to be celebratory, Mayor Coleman asked for a special meeting to be held, apparently hoping to get council’s immediate approval of all of his proposed appointees for city positions.
The way the appointment process works is this: under Section 5.05 the Highland Heights Charter, the mayor is given the authority to select the individuals that he would like to appoint to city department head positions and council has the authority to either approve or disapprove of the mayor’s choices.
Section 5.05 reads, in part: "The Mayor ...shall appoint all other department
heads (other than the Finance Director), subject to the approval of a majority of the members of Council..."
It’s a checks-and-balances thing, which is intended to encourage cooperation between the mayor and council with regard to employment decisions.
So, if it is supposed to be a cooperative process, why the rush to get the appointments approved by council immediately following the swearing-in, when many family members and guests were present and watching?
Although he never explained himself, one guess would be that Mayor Coleman was hoping to use the festive occasion to get a rubber stamp vote and avoid discussing some of his selections with council.
I say that because listed on the agenda were two names that I think council might be particularly interested in discussing: David Ianiro (reappointment as Recreation Director) and David Menn (a new appointment as Building Commissioner).
The Proposed Reappointment of David Ianiro as Recreation Director
The fact that Mayor Coleman wants to reappoint David Ianiro took some in attendance by surprise given the recent disclosures about the recreation department’s significant deficit spending last year---brought about, in part, by the unbudgeted hiring of 15 extra pool employees last summer (to date, neither Mayor Coleman nor David Ianiro has publicly accepted responsibility for that hiring decision).
In including David Ianiro’s name for reappointment, Mayor Coleman clearly signaled his endorsement of David Ianiro and his past performance as the city’s recreation director.
Based on the questions council members recently raised regarding the recreation department’s deficit spending (and David Ianiro’s blatant disregard of his own budget), it is remarkable that Mayor Coleman would expect that council would be willing to approve that reappointment without engaging in a significant amount of discussion beforehand.
The Proposed Building Commissioner Appointment
The listing of David Menn’s name on the agenda (and the inclusion of an accompanying pay ordinance) was the first inkling to the public that Mayor Coleman had decided to abandon--after two years--his strategy of staffing the city Building Department with both a full-time uncertified Acting Building Commissioner (Jim Austin) and a part-time certified Interim Building Commissioner (Tom Jamieson) (read my January 5th blog for more details on that dual-employment arrangement.)
Mayor Coleman informed council of his new proposed Building Commissioner appointment in a December 30, 2009 memo, which council members received while they were out on their mid-winter break.
Council had not yet had an opportunity to discuss that decision or the mayor’s proposed appointment in public when they appeared for the January 5th swearing-in ceremony, nor had council's Legislative & Finance Committee met to discuss or recommend an appropriate salary range for the newly restored Building Commissioner position.
Despite the fact that no public discussion had yet taken place, Mayor Coleman pushed to get immediate approval of both the salary ordinance and the proposed appointment at the special meeting.
To that end, Mayor Coleman went so far as to invite David Menn (who is currently the University Heights Building Commissioner) to attend that meeting. He also wrote and distributed a memo on January 5, 2010 (which was timed to be received by council members as they arrived for the swearing-in ceremony), in which he claimed that Council President Scott Mills had represented to him that council had informally approved of the appointment during the week of December 21st.
The January 5th memo read, in part: "Mr. Mills informed me that he would... see if council was favorable of the appointment....Mr. Mills told me that....there were no concerns with him (David Menn) or his proposed salary and that everyone 'seemed excited'."
I can only assume that Mayor Coleman wrote and distributed the January 5th memo as a pressure or leverage tactic, hoping to use it to get his appointment through on January 5th without a hitch (by essentially saying to council: “I was told it’s a go, so you can’t back out now”).
But if that was the mayor’s intent, it had quite the opposite effect.
Ohio’s Sunshine Law requires public bodies to hold all deliberations about public business, and to conduct all votes on public business, in public, at public meetings. Even executive sessions (during which personnel and employment matters can be discussed--but not decided upon---in private) must be held within the context of a public meeting. Both Mayor Coleman and Council President Scott Mills are very familiar with that law.
The Ohio Supreme Court has said:The Sunshine law reads: "This section (Ohio Revised Code § 121.22) shall be liberally construed to require public officials to take official action
and to conduct all deliberations upon official business only in open meetings
unless the subject matter is specifically excepted by law."
"The statute requires that governmental bodies 'conduct all deliberations
upon official business only in open meetings.'.. Its very purpose is to prevent
... elected officials meeting secretly to deliberate on public issues
without accountability to the public." The State ex Rel Cincinnati Post v. The
City of Cincinnati, 76 Ohio St. 3d 540.
In claiming, in his memo, that council had already informally pre-approved his appointee, Mayor Coleman essentially accused Council President Scott Mills and the rest of council of acting illegally--of violating the Sunshine Law--by deliberating and voting upon his proposed appointment (through use of a straw poll conducted by Mills) outside of a public meeting.
Why put such a serious accusation in writing? Well, I can only guess that Mayor Coleman was hoping to intimidate council into rubber-stamping, without further ado, his proposed appointee and the pay ordinance (which provided for a starting salary of $ 78,000, with an automatic $ 2,000 pay increase after 6 months).
A calm but clearly angry Council President Scott Mills quickly attempted to set the record straight once the special meeting began. He stated that, at Mayor Coleman's request, he had passed along information about the mayor's decision to council members, but Mills adamantly asserted that council “did not vote in any form” on the proposed appointment. He then asked for a motion to remove all of the mayor’s proposed appointments from the agenda. Mills indicated that he wanted to move them to the agenda for “the first regular session of council, where the public will be able to attend and to make comments.”
That motion was made. Council passed it unanimously.
Council will begin discussing Mayor Coleman’s proposed city appointments at a Committee of the Whole meeting, Tuesday Jan. 12, at 7 pm.
One of the items that several council members indicated that they would like to discuss is whether the city should publicly post the Building Commissioner job, to develop a pool of candidates that Mayor Coleman can choose from. As it stands now, the only potential candidate that apparently even knew of the vacancy was David Menn.
A calm but clearly angry Council President Scott Mills quickly attempted to set the record straight once the special meeting began. He stated that, at Mayor Coleman's request, he had passed along information about the mayor's decision to council members, but Mills adamantly asserted that council “did not vote in any form” on the proposed appointment. He then asked for a motion to remove all of the mayor’s proposed appointments from the agenda. Mills indicated that he wanted to move them to the agenda for “the first regular session of council, where the public will be able to attend and to make comments.”
That motion was made. Council passed it unanimously.
Council will begin discussing Mayor Coleman’s proposed city appointments at a Committee of the Whole meeting, Tuesday Jan. 12, at 7 pm.
One of the items that several council members indicated that they would like to discuss is whether the city should publicly post the Building Commissioner job, to develop a pool of candidates that Mayor Coleman can choose from. As it stands now, the only potential candidate that apparently even knew of the vacancy was David Menn.
The question, I think, is a pretty fundamental one: does Mayor Coleman’s approach--of avoiding the public posting of job vacancies and filling vacancies by simply enticing away neighboring cities’ employees---constitute good government?
That’s certainly something for council to consider, when it meets next week.
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