Things are quiet here at work this week, so I had some time to make it out to the SEU meeting at the Buena Vista Conference Center. I have never been to one of these sorts of meetings before, so I was a bit tentative. Luckily, there were some pretty smart and experienced people on hand to challenge the board.
John Kowalko was in attendance as an interested observer, as was John Flaherty. Both of them asked questions, but we all left a little disappointed. It should be noted that Copeland was the last to arrive (sorry about your dog, Charlie) at 10:29 and gave the board quorum. At 10:39, Patty Blevins had to leave, breaking quorum. So there were really only 10 minutes of official business. Half of that time was spent approving a letter written by the board’s attorney to address conflict of interest concerns. The other half was spent approving the minutes from the last meeting.
The balance of the time was spent discussing various issues of the board. The bylaws were of particular interest, since the bylaws and board composition are due to the legislature soon to formalize the board. McDowell was repeatedly asked questions about sources of sample bylaws and conflict of interest statements. I have to say that John Byrne and Charlie Copeland were quite combative with several of the members of the public (including Flaherty), but that the board’s lawyer was very willing to engage the participants.
Byrne got himself in hot water when he referred to the board as a public non-profit. When pressed for what the hell a public non-profit was, McDowell asked that the question be submitted in writing and would be reviewed by counsel. He then threw out a statement that the board gets many conflicting requests, and that they cannot all be acted upon. Someone suggested that all submitted questions and their answers be posted on the website, to which McDowell responded that as a volunteer organization, their time was limited.
One of the people in attendance asked why there were no provisions in the bylaws that would cover removal of sitting board members. She specifically said “the head of the board.” McDowell kept coming back to transparency. The money quote is “I have never been involved in an organization that had as much transparency in my 30 years in the Senate.” Having seen how the Senate operates, I believe it. He also said that he doesn’t want to burden “this new baby” with a lot of rules that bog it down. Gotta love that in an oversight board.
There are two catches here:
- The board is currently acting in compliance with FOIA. But their charter does not state that they must. This means that they could decide to not respond to a FOIA request in the future and the requester would then have to litigate to get at the information.
- As John Kowalko pointed out, transparency is not synonymous with accountability. So, if we did request a document that showed malfeasance, there may be no recourse, such as removing a board member.
I should also note that the letter from the attorney that I mentioned earlier concentrates on the fact that the board doesn’t have any ability to directly influence the spending of money, except in such a circumstance that a contract administrator cannot be found for a particular program. I will publish the letter as soon as I have a copy of it.
I need to do some more research on this, especially some of the points that Kowalko discussed with me before and after the meeting. It was great to have a DL presence at this meeting, hopefully we can get out there a little bit more in the future.