Austin City Council: Open Meetings

(Community Matters) I’m floored that the opening meetings act would be interpreted to dissuade council members from discussing and finding compromises & solutions prior to the public meetings where they take additional citizen input and arrive at final decisions.  AAS story.

Is it realistic to think this business can all take place during the limited hours of public meetings? Of course, votes and final discussion (after final citizen & staff input) are appropriately part of the requirement.

Certainly don’t begrudge our County Attorney for pursuing clarifying the law. If there’s room for interpretation, I’d know he’ll do so realistically. As we’re identifying emergency legislative issues perhaps the Governor could be persuaded to add this and civil service reform to the agenda.

the latter referring to silly arbitrator decisions requiring promotion of employees convicted of shoplifting & lying to investigators