Suprise! Legislative Session tonight!
Hmm, a bit dusty around here.

You people mainly hear from me after council meetings, and I've missed the last several (because of illness and work related travel).

I went to what I thought was going to be a work session tonight, to find instead a full-blown legislative session. Surprise! I would write more, but I should spend my energy shaking off the remains of this cold, or working on more important things (like Vernon Archer's campaign).

So, a few highlights:

• Roland Walker asked earlier this month for copies of all executive orders issued by Guy Tiberio during this administration. He got them, but one (the one detailing how to deal with requests for public documents) was not the same as he had seen in the office, or I (among others) had received in the past. He wrote a strong letter asking for an explanation, and got a strong response from the Mayor, including an accusation that the letter was purely politically motivated, and the explanation that the document issued was the "internal procedure document" for how to deal with requests, and not the order itself.
  
  Roland getting the "internal procedure document" could have been an honest mistake. Possible, but somewhat unlikely in my opinion. It could have been an attempt to cover up the real content of the executive order. Very unlikely. Or it could have been a bit of bait thrown out to provoke a letter like Roland's, to serve (soon!) as the basis for the Mayor accusing "the other side" of slinging mud. My bet's on that.
  
  Of course, the request was from Roland Walker, not the Archer campaign, and the response to it shows a certain sloppiness and lack of care in dealing with public documents that doesn't reflect well on the current mayor. We'll have to keep an eye on this one.
  
  Oh, one more little tidbit. In his response, the Mayor said that only once during this administration had the town charged the $25/hour "research" fees mentioned in the executive order (and the procedure), and that was only because they had to dig information from ancient archives (which took significant staff time). The town charged me $12.50 for 30 minutes of staff time "researching" official minutes of town meetings from the first half of 2004 (my request was in July of 2004). That, too, could have been an honest mistake. Possible, but somewhat unlikely....
  
  Update (10:18pm): Here's a link to an article Roland wrote on the executive order
  
  
• I was going to be brief. Sigh.
  
  
• I wanted to ask a few questions about the draft budget distributed at the meeting. The Mayor (not very politely) refused, suggesting I could come to a budget committee meeting. I wanted to understand three lines out of the budget that jumped out at me as being unusual, and was told I could wait until after the election to find out about them. Oh well!
  
  
• A $100,000 contract was awarded for street repairs.
  
  

Enough for tonight (and probably until the election).

Vote carefully on May 2!
- posted by Alan K. Thompson @ 9:36 PM