During his sworn testimony today, APS Supt Winston Brooks testified that school board members held a discussion and took a vote in violation of the Open Meetings Act which reads in significant part;The formation of public policy or the conduct of business by vote shall not be conducted in closed meetings.
When then School Board Member Robert Lucero first suggested that Mark Bralley and I should be ejected and then be expelled from the August 25, 2010 Audit Committee Meeting, Mark created an incontrovertible record in the form of a digital record.There was no tape of any kind rolling when Lucero suggested it again later, during (or right after (Brooks' was uncertain) the executive session while the board was still meeting in secret from the people.
When they say off the record, they mean off the record.
It is the deliberate policy of the leadership of the APS to not create a record during their meetings in secret, even though only an order from a court could force them to produce any recording they made. It is prophylactic tampering with evidence.
There is no reason to not create an incontrovertible record of their deliberations and decisions on our behalf, except that they could be used as evidence in litigation over public corruption and incompetence.
They intend to not create a record of their upcoming in secret meeting; an executive session for the purpose of discussing current litigation against the district, link.
These particular meetings are important because the entire board is convened to provide the people's oversight over the spending of operational funds on litigation. They are supposed to prevent unnecessary and/or unjustifiable expenditures. An all hands meeting ensures that no one can later on say, "I didn't know what they were doing."
The downside of course, is that we have to "trust" a whole bunch of people we don't really know, in the face of enormous temptation. We give them control over our power and resources and trust them to spend them in our interest in secret from our own oversight.
For whatever reasons school boards meet in whole and in secret to discuss any case analyses, school boards in whole should be discussing all case analyses. The APS School Board has not yet reviewed and approved of the spending of School Board President Marty Esquivel and APS Supt Winston Brooks on their own defenses.
The board has an absolute obligation to oversee for us, the spending of power and resources that belong fundamentally to the people. They are negligent if they do not.
If they discussed and decided on an analysis of my case, at this meeting, it would be in violation of the law.
It is a serious thing to violate the provisions of the Open Meetings Act.
Brooks admitted today, that he witnessed the board discuss and decide to toss Bralley and me out of the Audit Committee meeting. Former Audit Committee Chair David Robbins admitted that they had discussed the decision to expel us.
That discussion and that vote were not on their agenda.
Forget for a moment whether they had any legitimate reason to bounce us. The way they did it, that they did it, violated the law.
If they thought the discussion they had, the decision they made, and the action they took, were in any way justified under the law, why did they hide what they did? Why didn't they describe with "reasonable specificity" the deviation they undertook?
Not telling the truth is a way of lying.
If there is nothing to hide,
why hide the ethically redacted truth?
... except to escape the consequences of having it told?
Just in case anyone might think, maybe they didn't know they were breaking the law;there to advise them and answering by name in support of the statement regarding closed discussions,
open government expert, School Board President and Defendant Marty Esquivel.
photos Mark Bralley
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