Thank you, Mayor Vaught, for standing up for open government

By Michael V. Hannigan

I love when politicians fight for open government, so kudos go to Athens Mayor Jerry Don Vaught this week.

Vaught used his prerogative as the presiding officer of the City Council to bring an important issue out from behind closed doors Monday night.

That night’s meeting agenda called for the council to convene into executive session (behind closed doors) to consult with its attorney “regarding contemplated and pending litigation.” As is required by open meetings law, the agenda further identified the specific issues the council wanted to talk to its attorney about with the Wood Street project being one of them.

This is absolutely an appropriate use of executive session. The council needs to be able to speak with its lawyer about lawsuits and litigation strategy without the opposition listening, and it certainly makes sense when talking about the Wood Street project.

The Wood Street project was a sewer line extension a few years ago that cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and included digging up and rebuilding part of the road. After about a year, however, the road began failing and has required repeated patching and repairs, according to officials. The fact that Wood Street has been listed as an executive session item on three other occasions going back to August 2015 bears witness to ongoing concern over the issue.

So possibility of a lawsuit? Yeah, definitely.

But on Monday night, is seems there were plans for more than just consulting with the attorney. Apparently there were plans for representatives from Velvin & Weeks Consulting Engineers — one of the entities involved in the Wood Street project — to present a proposed solution for the issue in executive session. If that does not violate the letter of the law because of the threat of a lawsuit, it certainly violates the spirit of the law.

So Vaught stepped in and called for the presentation to be done in open session.

“In the nine years, almost, that I have been on the council we have never allowed a company to come into our executive session to discuss possible remedy for something of this nature,” he said. “I think due to the nature of it, it should be a very public information item.”

After Councilman Monte Montgomery asked if the City could do that, City Attorney Blake Armstrong said, “We can, if the mayor wants to. He’s the presiding officer of the meeting, if he wants to ask for a presentation by Velvin & Weeks to be done in open session … we can do that.”

Velvin & Weeks representatives declined to do a presentation at that time, and in all fairness I can’t blame them. They had prepared to speak to a handful of people in a small conference room, not give a presentation to a big room with an audience. The two things are very different and I would have probably declined in their place as well.

For me, the point isn’t about whether a presentation was done or not. I am cautiously optimistic that a compromise on the Wood Street problem will be reached that works for everyone and particularly for the residents of Athens.

What is important is that the mayor stood up for open government and hopefully that is an action that reaches beyond this one issue.

So thank you, Mayor Vaught, for protecting the public’s right to know.

— Michael V. Hannigan