Open Meeting Law, SSN Exposure and Secret Meeting

8/12/10

The State Department of Administration IPAD has agreed to review if the City Council of Montrose complied with the Open Meeting Law in the posting of several meetings earlier this year.

After a meeting I spoke with Sharon Knodel that they may have violated the open meeting law by NOT making available to the public the document they reviewed.  She said she would have to ask the city attorney Bob Ruppe who responded and asked if I would like a copy now.  I told him it was after the fact.  He did make a point during the meeting to let the council know TWICE that the only decision they could make was on the job description, yet when they brought in data in the middle of the meeting, didn't say anything.


In a separate case, they quickly recessed the meeting to make copies when it was interjected during the meeting, there was no interjection here.

SSN Exposure and Secret Meeting
Separately, in April, the City of Montrose released their Identity Theft Prevention Program annual report.  This report said that due to the EXTREME volume of data requests related to pay the redaction of SSN data was EXTREMELY high and a Social Security Number was released to the public.

This SSN belonged to a Council Member.  When I reviewed this data, I saw only 2.  There were 2 others that weren't pay releated.  These data requests were simple and the SSN data was in an uniform location.  When this was 1st requested, the City Clerk Barbara Thwing-Swanson told me the request was UNCLEAR.  What was requested was almost exactly what was in their Annual Report.


A complaint had been filed about this and dealt with, by the Personnel Committee.  2 employees received written reprimands.  This was never brought up to the entire council, it was done completely in the background.  Since I've attended meetings, to my knowledge, personnel items were always put to the council to vote on.  Not in this case.  Why would this have been handled differently?

Other:

* Asked for Personnel committee authority/responsibilities data, the city responded there was none.