by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
The first half of Thursday morning’s four-and-a-half-hour orientation for the 2007-11 City Council Executive Assistants dealt with all the things any executive assistant needs to know. They learned how the City handles payroll, equipment inventory, travel arrangements and expenses, document organization, record keeping and even which cabinet in the office holds the pencils and writing pads.
The first couple of hours also covered the more specialized tasks involved with the City Council’s proprietary protocols ranging from which division drafts resolutions honoring constituent centenarians to where a community service organization is allowed to hold a meeting on City property.
The second half of the session was devoted to compliance with state laws concerning open meetings, commonly called the “Sunshine Laws.”
Before she began the presentation, Assistant General Counsel Margaret Sidman pointed out the unintentional but ironic timing of the orientation. While she was at City Hall educating the ECAs about how to ensure compliance with the Sunshine Laws, a few blocks away at the County Courthouse, a Grand Jury was convening to consider whether current and former City Council members should be prosecuted for violating the State statute.
Sidman began her presentation, “I don’t know how many of you have had the Grand Jury experience. It’s not a good experience.”
The presentation included how to comply with regulations regarding open meetings and how notice must be provided to the public. Sidman also educated the ECAs about actions that can violate the statute from failing to give at least 24 hours notice of an upcoming meeting between two or more Council members and the requirements for recording proper minutes of meetings to elected officials not being allowed to whisper to each other or pass around notes among themselves during a meeting.
After Sidman completed her presentation she pointed out, “The Sunshine Law won’t work unless the Council members uphold their sworn oath.”
Several sections of the massive binder the ECAs received at the orientation covered the Council’s new systems for ensuring compliance with the Sunshine Laws and made it clear most of the responsibility lies with the Council members’ assistants, who will file the notices, be responsible for documenting the proceedings and submitting summaries and minutes for publication.
Like much of the day-to-day Council operations, the process of complying with the Sunshine Law has gone high-tech.
Cheryl Brown, Council director, detailed the entire electronic process from the minute the notice for the meeting is posted through the final part of the protocol, filing the minutes of the meeting within 72 hours of adjournment. In addition to real-time documentation, a new section is on the Council’s page on www.coj.net that makes notices and minutes available to the public as soon as the documents are posted.
Brown said the e-mail- and Web-based system complies with the requirements of Ordinance 2007-733 enacted by the Council June 26, but other than the 21st-century process, nothing has changed.
“The City Council been complying with the Sunshine Laws since 1968, but the ordinance places responsibility for compliance with the Council Secretary’s Office. Now we have one procedure. It’s all under one umbrella and that means we’ll have consistency. That’s what 2007-733 did for us.”