Pittsburgh City Council's Private Debate On Pay Hike May Have Violated State's Sunshine Law
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Pittsburgh City Council may have violated the state's Sunshine Law when council members discussed and debated their own pay raise behind closed doors.
Political Editor Jon Delano, who first reported council's 22 percent pay raise, has the latest on this controversy.
Last Saturday, Pittsburgh City Council held a public meeting to roll back their pay raise. But before open public debate could begin, a motion was made to go into executive session, hiding discussion from the public.
Council went into a private session for an hour and a half, during which members debated how much to roll back their pay -- outside of public view -- eventually concluding on a 6 percent pay raise.
But was it a violation of the state's Sunshine Law for this debate to occur in private? That law, says Liz Wagenseller, the executive director of the state's Office of Open Records, "requires governing bodies to deliberate and take official action in an open and public meeting, basically not making decisions behind closed doors without the public knowing and having the ability to comment on it."
Wagenseller says it's one thing to debate privately the salary of an individual employee, but quite another to use an executive session to hide debate on the salary for a whole body of elected officials.
"Our opinion is that it does not include a whole body of individuals. It's for individual situations," she said.
Erik Arneson, the former head of the Office of Public Records, says he's unaware of any public body doing what Pittsburgh's council just did on their pay.
"It's a huge problem. I think the taxpayers of Pittsburgh would rightly be very upset by this," says Arneson.
There's another problem. When you go into an executive session, it's not enough to say it's a personnel or legal matter.
"What the courts have told us is that agencies cannot provide generic descriptions," says Melissa Melewsky, media counsel with the Pennsylvania News Media Association. "They can't just say a one-word justification because that public announcement is our only opportunity to understand why we've been excluded."
Melewsky says discussion of council's own pay should be out in the open.
"That's the kind of discussion the public is entitled to witness and participate in under the Sunshine Act," Melewsky said.
Another problem, says Melewsky, occurred after the private meeting when an amendment to change council pay was offered without ever stating the contents of the amendment.
"It's difficult to understand how the public comment provision is complied within a situation where the agency doesn't announce anything about what they're voting on," she says.
Still another problem, council then approved the amendment before allowing citizens to comment. Wagenseller says citizens have 30 days from last Saturday to file a complaint with the local courts.
"If the courts find there was a violation of the Sunshine Act, they could invalidate the vote," she says.
Pittsburgh City Council President Theresa Kail-Smith defended the closed-door session, saying it was held on the advice of city attorneys.
"We do what's advised to us by our solicitor, and that particular session was with our solicitor to find out what we're doing, and members have a right to attorney-client privilege," says Kail-Smith.
It's true the city solicitor made a brief report to council members in private on how their initial 22 percent pay raise violated the Home Rule Charter. But the bulk of the meeting was on the pay raise itself, which Sunshine Law experts say was not privileged.
For her part, Kail-Smith says she wants council to comply with the law.
"We'll continue this conversation with our law department to make sure we come up with a correct process moving forward," she said.
The state's Office of Open Records does offer free training on the Sunshine Act to members of councils, commissions and school boards.
When council eventually came back into public session following the private meeting, Kail-Smith did give members a chance to debate in public what they had just debated in private. None of them took advantage of that opportunity.
