The League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson’s Observer Corps issued its first report in September focusing on the transparency of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, Tucson Mayor and Council, Oro Valley Mayor and Council, Amphitheater School District Governing Board, Tucson Unified School District Governing Board, Holladay Magnet Site Council, and University High School Site Council.
The report asked: “How easy is it for constituents to obtain basic information about the governing bodies under observation and the decisions they are making that affect constituents?”
According to the report, “During the first observation period, April 2016 through August 2016, some League observers continued observations that had begun previously, and newly assigned League observers began getting acquainted with the governing bodies to which they were assigned.”
“None of the four districts surveyed (TUSD, Amphitheater, Tanque Verde, and Catalina Foothills) had uniform, reliable web postings of meeting schedules, agendas and minutes for site councils at every school site in the district. It is unclear how many school sites in each district do not currently have functioning site councils,” reads the report. “The Corps ran into a few instances of it as the informal survey was conducted, but did not proceed to conduct an exhaustive study of the subject. What we can say with some certainty is that not every family utilizing a public district school has an equal degree of representation on – or easily accessible communication from — a public governing body that “ensures that individuals who are affected by the outcome of a decision at the school site share in the decision making process,” the supposed purpose of the establishment of Site Councils according to ARS 15-351.”
League defines transparency as: “If a public institution is properly “transparent,” its representatives (including both elected officials and the administrative employees in the public institutions which elected officials govern) are conveying information that allows citizens to understand decisions the government will be making that will affect their lives. Where transparency is in good working order, the first pre-condition is in place for a central goal of democratic government to be achieved: giving citizens appropriate opportunities to provide feedback and input into the decisions that will affect their lives. You can’t influence a decision if you don’t know it will be made.”
The observers attended, watched online, and read minutes from selected meetings. The report reads in part:
Amphitheater School District Board Based on Observations conducted April ’16 – August ’16
| Is there a website? | Yes: http://www.amphi.com/Page/7547 Can be opened easily from some computers; others display a message indicating that a secure connection with www.amphi.com cannot be established. |
| Does the website have info on Open Meeting Law (OML) | At the bottom of the web page on Governing Board Meetings, there is this statement: “Board meetings shall be open to the public and to the media except for Executive Sessions, which are closed to the public or media.” There is no statement referring to Open Meeting Law, providing materials on OML, or noting that the meetings being open to the public is a legal requirement rather than a policy decision of Amphi. In the Board’s policy manual, the section on “School Board Meetings,” refers to ARS 38-431.02 and “38-431 et seq.” and provides links which take you to portions of the relevant statutes. |
| …..and does it state that the governing body is subject to OML? | No explicit statement of this is prominent either on the Amphi Governing Board web pages or in the relevant sections of the policy manual. In the policy manual, some of the relevant statutes are linked, but not others. The way the information is provided seems unlikely to meet the needs of laypeople not familiar with public institutions and the rights guaranteed to them by Arizona law. |
| …..if there is information on OML, is the information foregrounded / easy to find? | No — see above. |
| ….has the Attorney General’s office found the governing body in violation of OML? | No. |
| Does the website have a meeting schedule? | Yes: http://www.amphi.com/Page/8502 |
| If no schedule, how far in advance is notice given and where is it given? | N/A |
| List of current members? | Yes: http://www.amphi.com/Page/8494 |
| Contact info for members? | E-mail addresses are provided on the above-linked page. |
| Terms of office for members? | The way the terms rotate is explained in general terms on this web page: http://www.amphi.com/Page/8500 The website does not seem to provide an easy way to determine when each Board member was elected and when they are up for re-election. |
| Agendas posted at least 24 hours before meeting? | Yes, a notice, agenda, agenda packet: http://www.amphi.com/Page/8496 |
| Drafts of minutes posted within 3 working days of meeting? | No. |
| If minutes are not being posted, what alternative transparency means is provided? | The administrative employee of the Board reports that constituents can come to the Amphi Governing Board office and obtain a zip drive with recordings of previous meetings. No recordings of previous meetings are posted on the website. This differs significantly from the practices of most of the other governing bodies observed. Other bodies, where they are behind on the production of minutes, provide an alternative way for constituents to view or listen to meetings through their websites, and they post these within the 3-day time limit required by law. |
| Does the website have an archive of minutes, or of video or audio recordings covering at least one full year? | As of 8/28/2016, the Board was several months behind on its production and approval of minutes. Some minutes are available through this web page: http://www.amphi.com/Page/10905 For many meetings, the website posting says, “forthcoming.” |
| If there is a video or audio archive of past meetings, is it easy to find? | N/A – no video or audio recordings of meetings are available through the website. You must drive to the governing board office to pick up a zip drive if you wish to listen to past meetings. |
| Additional comments or questions | The process through which an alternative means to transparency is being provided when minutes are not posted within the time frame required by law seems to put unnecessary obstacles in the way of public access to recordings of meetings. It is unclear why recordings cannot be posted on the website. It is also unclear why website access seems to work from some computers but not from others. |
Tucson Unified School District Board Based on Observations conducted April ’16 – August ’16
| Is there a website? | Yes: http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/govboard.html |
| Does the website have info on Open Meeting Law (OML) | If you enter “Open Meeting Law” in the search box you pull up various links to explanatory materials, e.g. http://www.tusd1.org/sdm/documents/openmeetingreq.pdf It is unclear how people visiting the website without previous knowledge of Open Meeting Law or the rights it should guarantee them would know to look for these materials. |
| …..and does it state that the governing body is subject to OML? | Explanatory materials are available if you know to search for them. No explicit statement that the TUSD governing board is subject to Open Meeting Law seems to be posted on any of the governing board web pages which constituents might visit if they developed an interest in the operations of the governing board (home page, meeting schedule, etc.) |
| …..if there is information on OML, is the information foregrounded / easy to find? | No — see above. |
| ….has the Attorney General’s office found the governing body in violation of OML? | Yes – an Attorney General decision given August 2016 found that a violation occurred in November 2015. |
| Does the website have a meeting schedule? | Yes: http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbschedule.html |
| If no schedule, how far in advance is notice given and where is it given? | N/A |
| List of current members? | Yes: http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/govboard.html |
| Contact info for members? | Yes: e-mail addresses for all Board members are given on the web page linked above. |
| Terms of office for members? | Yes: http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/govboard.html |
| Agendas posted at least 24 hours before meeting? | Spot checked – no problems observed. |
| Drafts of minutes posted within 3 working days of meeting? | No. |
| If minutes are not being posted, what alternative transparency means is provided? | Videos can be livestreamed while they are occurring from this web page: http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbvideo.html An audio archive of past meetings is available here: http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbmeetings.html A video archive of past meetings is available here: http://www.tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbvideo_archive.html A video archive of past meetings is usually available, though: one important meeting, the January 5, 2016 meeting where the current Board President and Clerk were re-appointed to their leadership roles, was not listed at all in the video archive. It could only be found in the audio archive. (In the Star article referencing this meeting, it was noted, “In the 60-plus year history of the board operating with five members, there ha[ve] never been two people holding the same seats for more than two years in a row.”) When the League inquired about the absent video recording, a representative of the district said the meeting had been “too short” to merit video recording. when we checked on the evening of August 28, videos of meetings after July 8, 2014 had been removed from the website with a note saying it was “due to a technical issue” and they would be “restoring these videos during the week of August 29.” The videos removed included ones to which current Board candidates Sedgwick and Stegeman had been referring voters, giving time marks to certain passages in the videos which they recommended constituents watch. When the videos were re-loaded on the website, they included long passages of video recording before the meetings actually began, which had the effect of dislocating the discussions to which Sedgwick and Stegeman had referred voters from the time marks where they had originally been located. For example Sedgwick referred voters to a call to the audience that had occurred at minute 00:51 to 1:16 in the 7/12/16 board meeting. After the reloading, the call to the audience in that tape began at approximately 1:12. Stegeman had referred constituents to a passage in the 11/10/15 video where the Attorney General had ruled a violation of Open Meeting Law occurred. He said the discussion occurred at 4:04 to 4:06. After the videos were reloaded, it occurred at 4:27 to 4:29. The alterations made to the video archive — whether they were intentional or unintentional — made it considerably harder for voters to find passages in the archive candidates were suggesting they examine in assessing the records in office of some of the candidates running for re-election. |
| Does the website have an archive of minutes, or of video or audio recordings covering at least one full year? | Yes, it usually does. See above for links. |
| If there is a video or audio archive of past meetings, is it easy to find? | Yes. |
| Additional comments or questions | League observers were not asked to answer questions about practices used in the Call to the Audience during this observation period, but it was noted during observations of this governing board that controversies arose in meetings about whether those speaking in the Call to the Audience should be required to give the Board their residence address before being allowed to speak in the Call. This is not required by OML, but it is required by TUSD policy. The Observer Corps Chair recommends that practices in Call to the Audience be studied and compared in the next reporting period. |
Site Council finding highlights:
Tucson Unified School District
The League of Women Voters of Greater Tucson has observers posted on two site councils in this district (Rincon / University High School and Holladay Magnet). A web sampling of site council postings for twenty-four of the district’s schools (one exam school, three neighborhood schools, and twenty magnet schools) was completed on May 3 and May 4, 2016. Of the twenty-four schools only one of them (the exam school, University High School) had web postings that appeared to be substantially in compliance with Arizona Open Meeting Law. (This was achieved after a League member who at the time had a student enrolled in the school brought problems with the postings to the attention of the school’s principal in December of 2015.)
Amphitheater School District
In May of 2016 fairly complete web postings were found for some schools’ site councils; incomplete postings were found for some schools’ site councils; no postings were found for other schools’ site councils.
Tanque Verde School District
In May of 2016 web postings could not be found for any Tanque Verde site councils. However, a passage in Tanque Verde School District Governing Board minutes appears to indicate that the schools do have site councils and that the councils serve some functions relating to the allocation of undesignated tax credit funds.