Resident questions delay in commissioners' minutes requests
By
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To the editor:
I found the article regarding the Management Letter for the Audit of Highland County to be pretty interesting and quite insightful as to just how well, or not, our county government is currently operating.
Especially interesting to me was the paragraph regarding the meeting minutes for the commissioners and Mr. Wilkin’s response to this matter. This is of particular interest to me as, in an attempt to educate myself about the role and operation of the commissioners, I have made some inquiries regarding the meeting minutes.
In mid‐July, I submitted a public records request from the commissioners, requesting that the minutes for the preceding 24 months be provided. I received a letter from the clerk for the commissioners stating that the minutes were available online at http://www.co.highland.oh.us. At that point in time the minutes were only available online through the end of March 2011.
Along with my request apparently not being submitted to the commissioners, the request was also not included in the correspondence list that is part of the weekly meetings which is made available to attendees of the meetings and the press.
I then submitted a second letter in late September, since no additional minutes had been added to the website since my first request. This time I took the liberty to carbon copy both Highland County newspaper editors to ensure proper visibility to this public records request.
I then followed up the next day and requested a copy of the minutes which had been approved at the meeting the day of my second records request and I was told that they were not available.
When I asked for the minutes for the several weeks preceding, I was told, by the clerk, that they were not available either. It is important to note that the commissioners had been approving the minutes from the previous week at every meeting that I had attended leading up to that point, so the lack of availability of these minutes at a public request is concerning.
I have since received a letter signed by all three commissioners following my second request with the following reason for the absence of minutes upon my request:
“In order to lower expenses, we reduced staff in the commissioners’ office from three full-time clerks to one full-time clerk, one part-time deputy clerk, and a receptionist provided by Mature Services. We hope that you can appreciate the difficulty in getting everything accomplished when hours worked were reduced from 120 hours per week to 60 hours per week, not to mention the loss of experienced and knowledgeable staff.”
As an attendee at the most recent meeting of the commissioners on Nov. 16, I noticed that there was no mention of the minutes from the previous meeting, Nov. 9. As before, I followed up the next day and requested the minutes from the Nov. 9 meeting, but was informed by the clerk that the minutes were not ready.
In light of the Nov. 9 department head meeting referenced in Ms. Chandler’s article, I would think that special focus would have been made to get the minutes completed in a timely manner. However, it appears that the state auditor’s advice has been taken with a grain of salt and then discarded in order to return to business as usual in Highland County.
If the clerk is so overwhelmed in completing her job, the commissioners should be in the office attending to the business that they were elected to complete and not painting lines on a parking lot.
The maintenance of meeting minutes is required by law and serves as the only official means to document actions taken by the commissioners during these meetings. The failure to take and produce the minutes of public meetings indicates a lack of competency, at a minimum, and an attempt to shield the public from the workings of a potentially (questionable) government, at worst.
I sincerely hope that incompetence is the reason behind this problem, but even then it is not a satisfactory excuse from those elected to serve the public’s interest.
I fear that this is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the failings of those who have been elected to work for Highland County, and the state audit does not lead me to think differently.
Sincerely,
Fred Boggess
New Vienna[[In-content Ad]]
I found the article regarding the Management Letter for the Audit of Highland County to be pretty interesting and quite insightful as to just how well, or not, our county government is currently operating.
Especially interesting to me was the paragraph regarding the meeting minutes for the commissioners and Mr. Wilkin’s response to this matter. This is of particular interest to me as, in an attempt to educate myself about the role and operation of the commissioners, I have made some inquiries regarding the meeting minutes.
In mid‐July, I submitted a public records request from the commissioners, requesting that the minutes for the preceding 24 months be provided. I received a letter from the clerk for the commissioners stating that the minutes were available online at http://www.co.highland.oh.us. At that point in time the minutes were only available online through the end of March 2011.
Along with my request apparently not being submitted to the commissioners, the request was also not included in the correspondence list that is part of the weekly meetings which is made available to attendees of the meetings and the press.
I then submitted a second letter in late September, since no additional minutes had been added to the website since my first request. This time I took the liberty to carbon copy both Highland County newspaper editors to ensure proper visibility to this public records request.
I then followed up the next day and requested a copy of the minutes which had been approved at the meeting the day of my second records request and I was told that they were not available.
When I asked for the minutes for the several weeks preceding, I was told, by the clerk, that they were not available either. It is important to note that the commissioners had been approving the minutes from the previous week at every meeting that I had attended leading up to that point, so the lack of availability of these minutes at a public request is concerning.
I have since received a letter signed by all three commissioners following my second request with the following reason for the absence of minutes upon my request:
“In order to lower expenses, we reduced staff in the commissioners’ office from three full-time clerks to one full-time clerk, one part-time deputy clerk, and a receptionist provided by Mature Services. We hope that you can appreciate the difficulty in getting everything accomplished when hours worked were reduced from 120 hours per week to 60 hours per week, not to mention the loss of experienced and knowledgeable staff.”
As an attendee at the most recent meeting of the commissioners on Nov. 16, I noticed that there was no mention of the minutes from the previous meeting, Nov. 9. As before, I followed up the next day and requested the minutes from the Nov. 9 meeting, but was informed by the clerk that the minutes were not ready.
In light of the Nov. 9 department head meeting referenced in Ms. Chandler’s article, I would think that special focus would have been made to get the minutes completed in a timely manner. However, it appears that the state auditor’s advice has been taken with a grain of salt and then discarded in order to return to business as usual in Highland County.
If the clerk is so overwhelmed in completing her job, the commissioners should be in the office attending to the business that they were elected to complete and not painting lines on a parking lot.
The maintenance of meeting minutes is required by law and serves as the only official means to document actions taken by the commissioners during these meetings. The failure to take and produce the minutes of public meetings indicates a lack of competency, at a minimum, and an attempt to shield the public from the workings of a potentially (questionable) government, at worst.
I sincerely hope that incompetence is the reason behind this problem, but even then it is not a satisfactory excuse from those elected to serve the public’s interest.
I fear that this is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the failings of those who have been elected to work for Highland County, and the state audit does not lead me to think differently.
Sincerely,
Fred Boggess
New Vienna[[In-content Ad]]