We haven’t looked in on the little town of 3,000 odd people of Quartzsite, Arizona, lately. Its goings-on continue to seem eerily applicable to our own county of 100,000 odd people.

On 9 December 2011, the Attorney General of Arizona, Tom Horne, issued a statement Re: Open Meeting Law Complaint against Town of Quartzsite Common Council (the “Council”), saying that the town Council had violated the state Open Meetings Law (OML) four times:

1. by not warning Jennifer Jones before removing her on 28 June 2011;
2. by holding a Council meeting on 10 July 2011 in which they excluded the public by actually locking the doors of their meeting room;
3. by failing to post minutes of the emergency meeting on its website as required by Arizona Law (yes, Arizona law, like Texas law, requires posting minutes on the web) and by not including a required statement of the emergency requiring the meeting;
4. and by failing to post withing the required three working days minutes for the 10 July 2011 emergency meeting, nor for seven of its work sessions, nor for its 14 June 2011 regular session.

This one wasn’t a violation, but may be at least as important:

The purpose of the OML is to require public bodies to meet publicly and openly so that al persons so desiring may attend and listen to the deliberations and proceedings.

Why, I believe that’s the same in Georgia!

It seems back-room meetings are bad: Continue reading →