Tag: Open Door law

Public’s work continues in Bloomington under COVID-19 protocols

Bloomington’s city council held a work session on Friday, March 13, 2020. Joining remotely via a Google Meet were four concilmembers and director of utilities Vic Kelson, who’s on-screen in this shot. (Dave Askins/Square Beacon)

At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has caused cancellation of several public meetings, Bloomington’s city council now has an additional, special meeting on its calendar set for March 25th.

The extra meeting was added so that the council can act to approve the re-funding of some waterworks bonds. The utilities services board approved the bond re-funding this past week. And the council’s action will set up the city to save about $2.3 million in interest.

Even if that kind of public business continues to get done, it’s not business as usual.

The city council chambers have been configured to reflect the most common precaution against spreading the COVID-19 virus: social distancing. About 60 audience chairs have been stacked to the sides of the chambers, leaving four rows in the center with at least a chair-wide gap between each seat. Continue reading “Public’s work continues in Bloomington under COVID-19 protocols” →

Opinion: It’s time to rethink closed door caucuses for Indiana city councils

caucus closed doorA 1980 article in the Valparaiso University Law Review states that the political party caucus exemption in the Open Door Law (ODL) here in the state of Indiana is “a major potential weakness in the act, and is virtually impossible to police.”

The same article mentions that there have been few problems with the caucus at the local level, either because it is not abused or else is used discretely enough to avoid criticism.

At lot has happened since 1980. But the law review article also mentions, as a point of curiosity, that up to that point there had been “few complaints by the press.”

Consider this column to be a complaint by the press. Continue reading “Opinion: It’s time to rethink closed door caucuses for Indiana city councils” →

City Council’s rules committee makes council personnel a top priority

At the first substantive meeting of the Bloomington city council’s rules committee on Friday, a few priorities were identified for future work.

City_Council-20190807-Packet (2)
The notice that was posted for the meeting of the council’s rules committee on Friday, Aug. 5, 2019. A week earlier, an attempted meeting of the committee was abandoned when questions arose over adequate notice under Indiana’s Open Door law.

The four top priorities are: the council’s personnel; meeting procedures, including time limits; a council policy manual; and a clean-up of city code on boards and commissions.

Those items were identified by the four-member committee, which now consists of Steve Volan, Isabel Piedmont-Smith, Jim Sims and Dorothy Granger. Granger is the council’s vice president. She was added to the committee by the council’s president, Dave Rollo, in the week since the rules committee’s first attempted meeting.

Personnel was elevated to top priority for the committee’s next meeting, because council administrator/attorney Dan Sherman is hiring a deputy administrator/attorney to fill a recent vacancy. And Sherman is planning to retire sometime in the next several months.

Councilmembers at Friday’s committee meeting were keen to have some input on the hire of Sherman’s deputy. They also said they wanted Sherman to be the one who makes the decision. Continue reading “City Council’s rules committee makes council personnel a top priority” →

Bloomington city council rules committee off to rough start

A meeting of the Bloomington city council rules committee on Monday evening was postponed to some other time, after less than 10 minutes of conversation.

The council’s administrator/attorney, Dan Sherman, questioned whether the meeting had been properly noticed, and that led to some sharp exchanges between him and City Clerk Nicole Bolden, an ex officio member of the committee.

When Bolden told Sherman, “…your behavior has been reprehensible, and incredibly rude and unprofessional,” councilmember Steve Volan, who was chairing the proceedings, said, “I think we should postpone this meeting.”

The rules committee has not existed for something like a decade, but was reconstituted by city council president Dave Rollo at the council’s June 12 meeting. Rollo named councilmembers Volan, Isabel Piedmont-Smith and Jim Sims to the committee and Bolden as an ex officio member.

Continue reading “Bloomington city council rules committee off to rough start” →