Miami Herald by Mary Ellen Klas
October 18, 2017
Can members of the powerful panel that has the authority to put constitutional amendments directly on the November 2018 ballot discuss votes in secret and lobby each other?
That is the question Indian River County Commissioner Bob Solari has been trying to get answered for six months. Now, his failure to get an answer, he said, could spell trouble for the commission.
As a member of the Constitution Revision Commission, Solari left the June 6 meeting of the commission baffled and confused.
Does the open meeting rule adopted by the commission prohibit meetings between two or more CRC commissioners, preventing members from lobbying one another, he asked. Or does it use the looser standard, allowing up to two commissioners to meet in secret but require meetings of more than two of them to be open?
The commission meets every 20 years and has the power to put proposals directly on the November 2018 ballot. It also develops its own rules for how to reach that goal and voted Tuesday on advancing only a handful of the more than 2,000 proposals submitted by the public.
Solari said he was under the impression that the commission had adopted “the more open and transparent ‘two or more’” rule as recommended by Commissioner Roberto Martinez– a more restrictive rule than what was adopted by the previous CRC that met in 1997-98. But Solari didn’t get a reply from Woodburn.
He waited five days and sent another email on June 11. Still no reply. He tried again on June 18. Silence.
Woodburn then agreed to talk by phone, avoiding putting put his answer in writing or creating a record trail. But Solari said Woodburn failed to clarify the rule again.
What’s more, Woodburn refused to forward Solari’s email outlining the issue to other commissioners, and ignored Solari’s requests to get a legal opinion from the commission’s lawyer.
He suggested that the CRC press release may have misled the public when it claimed the commission had adopted rules that “facilitate an open and transparent process for the public.”
“In Indian River County, if we said that we were operating in an ‘open and transparent’ manner, most citizens would take this to mean that we were operating in the full sunshine not in the partial shade,”’ he said.
Solari told his colleagues that he is open to adopting the looser rule that would allow commissioners to lobby each other and learn from each other in private conversations. “I don’t care how the issue goes, I just think we all need to be on the same page,’’ he said.
Cerio concluded said that the commission will ask its legal counsel to publish the advice.
“I think we’re following exactly what was done 20 years ago but if that’s unclear, we owe it to the public as well as our fellow commissioners,” he said.
CRC spokesperson Meredith Beatrice would not comment on why Woodburn and Cerio have refused to answer Solari’s question or put any response in writing. She said the commission “adopted the identical rule (Rule 1.23) that was adopted and followed by the previous CRC in 1997-1998.”
“Some form of follow-up will be provided,” she said. “This is an open and transparent process. All commissioners hold themselves to a high standard.”
. . .
He said he worries that the optics surrounding the commission rules could interfere in the success of the constitutional amendments it asks voters to approve.
“One of the things we need to do, as we make proposals and transfer them onto the ballot, is to build the public trust,” Solari said. “The best way to build the public trust is to operate in a open and transparent manner. If the public was watching our public meetings, the takeaway would not be something that builds that trust.” [READ MORE]
