Gillett City Council flaunted open meetings law

By: 
Warren Bluhm
Oconto County Times Herald Editor

The Gillett City Council flagrantly violated the Wisconsin open meetings law when it arranged for Mayor James Beaton to resign last month.

NEW Media Inc. has discussed asking the Oconto County District Attorney’s Office to investigate the matter, and in fact I was tasked with drafting a letter to the DA asking for that investigation. Instead, I’m submitting this column, and if you’re reading it that means I convinced my bosses to see it my way.

Don’t get me wrong: The council betrayed its trust to the people of its community and deserves to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Unfortunately, the open meetings law only allows for a slap on the wrist.

So, as an alternative, let’s state the case for the people of Gillett to consider come the next election in April.

Beaton was forced out of his home on Main Street when his business partner sold the business in early September. A friend in Appleton gave him temporary shelter.

On Sept. 30, he was presented with a letter signed by all six council members, alleging that since he was not living in the city limits, by law, he had vacated his position as mayor and asking him therefore to resign. “Failure to resign would result in a due process hearing,” it concluded.

The law states that an elected representative needs to live in the community he represents. The council was within its rights to ask Beaton to resign.

Here’s the first problem: We have found no evidence that the council ever met and/or voted to have that letter drafted and sent to Beaton. The city issued no public notice of a council meeting, open or closed. As far as the public record is concerned, the letter just appeared out of nowhere and was placed in Beaton’s possession that day.

It’s painfully obvious the council members talked among themselves off the record and had the city attorney draft the letter — the very definition of a “walking quorum,” which violates both the spirit and letter of the open meetings law.

As a result, the demand for Beaton’s resignation, and negotiations with him to make it happen, flew completely under the radar. The first public indication of any trouble came midway through an hourlong closed session near the beginning of the council’s regular monthly meeting Oct. 3, when Beaton emerged and left City Hall.

When the council emerged, they passed a motion without discussion approving a “release and separation agreement” in which Beaton was paid the rest of his salary through April in exchange for his resignation.

That leads us to the second problem: The closed session was illegal.

The publicly released agenda for the meeting included an executive session under the exemption in the open meeting law, 19.85(1)(c), that allows for closing the doors when “considering employment, promotion, compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility.”

Beaton was not a “public employee” under the legal definition of the term. James Friedman, attorney for the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, pointed out that people holding local or state public office are specifically exempted from the definition of “public employee.”

“It’s certainly not appropriate to go into closed session for that purpose,” Friedman told us when we described the situation.

I’m ashamed to say I didn’t ask about the executive session before it happened. It’s not unusual for public bodies to cite that exemption, which usually covers things like hiring a new department head or talking about pay raises and the like. I let down our readers, because I trusted those six people to be doing the right thing by the people of Gillett and obeying the law.

As a result, the council was able to drive the mayor out of City Hall before anyone realized what was happening. The council always makes time at the start of a meeting for public comment — but no one spoke that night because the public can’t comment if it doesn’t know.

I’ve spent 40-odd years covering small-town governments. I’ve never seen an elected public official removed from office in secret and before the public had any inkling or a chance to comment. The open meetings law was designed to prevent stuff like this.

The law allows for fines of $25 to $300 per violation. By my math, seeing at least two obvious violations, the six council members could be fined up to $600, and the county coffers would gain $3,600 — but the city’s lawyers would bill the taxpayers for every hour spent fighting the allegations.

My suggestion: Candidates for mayor and City Council can start circulating nomination papers Dec. 1. Three seats are up in next April’s election, and the other three are up in April 2021. (If waiting for 2021 is too long, recall is another option.) It’s been hard to find people willing to serve on the Gillett City Council, but these events are clear evidence that Gillett needs some serious change.

The council may argue they didn’t realize they were violating the law and were just trying to do right by the city of Gillett. They all do seem to be nice people, and it gives me no pleasure to dress them down this way, no matter how much they deserve it.

If this was an innocent mistake – I don’t buy it, but if it was – at minimum they should volunteer for the next workshop to learn about the open meetings law, so that nothing this egregious ever happens again. Maybe they could each donate $600 to a local food pantry or other charity of their choice.