Judge Daniel Creitz will not intervene on behalf of Iola City Council members Ken Rowe and Kendall Callahan, who face a recall vote.
Creitz was asked by several members of the Iola Commission to quash the recall vote on Aug. 7.
“The court does not have the authority or jurisdiction,” for such an action, Creitz wrote, “until a case is properly filed.”
Commissioner Steve French orchestrated the effort asking for Creitz to intervene.
A “yes” vote on Aug. 7 will support the recall of Rowe and Callahan.
THE ALLEGATIONS against Rowe and Callahan holding meetings illegally were brought to the attention of Sandy Jacquot, legal counsel for the Kansas League of Municipalities and Mike Merriam, legal counsel for the Kansas Press Association.
“Kansas open meetings laws are frequently misunderstood by communities,” said Jacquot in a telephone interview Friday afternoon.
Jacquot acknowledged she was unfamiliar with the specifics of the allegations against the Iola councilmen, but said council committees are subject to open meetings laws — even informal ones.
“If you meet regularly to discuss city business, you probably should be considered a formal committee” and subject to the Kansas Open Meetings Act, Jacquot said. KOMA ensures the public has access to meetings conducted by elected officials. “We try to tell cities that if there’s any question, to err on the side of transparency and make meetings open.”
Jacquot’s comments were confirmed by Merriam.
REGISTERED voters in Iola’s first and fourth voting wards are eligible to take part in the recall, regardless of party affiliation. Ward 1 voters will decide Callahan’s fate. Rowe’s status will be determined by voters in Ward 4.
Rowe and Callahan deny allegations laid out by Iolans For Good Government, a group of local residents highly critical of recent council actions and whose members organized the recall effort.
The embattled councilmen are accused of “knowingly violating
the Kansas Open Meetings Act” by conducting city business via committees; and by failing to include justification statements when making motions for executive or private sessions for the entire council.
ROWE and Callahan beg to differ.
“Those committee meetings have been 100 percent legal,” Callahan said.
The meetings were not open to KOMA regulations, the councilmen said, because they never featured more than four council members.
According to KPA legal counsel, a committee of two or more discussing city business can be petitioned to disclose their meeting dates and be open to the public.
Rowe, meanwhile, thinks Allen County Attorney Wade Bowie is in error for allowing the recall vote.
“I think Wade Bowie made a serious error when he allowed the petitioners to proceed because he was basing his decision on an outdated law,” Rowe said.
That accusation was echoed in French’s letter that he presented at Monday’s council meeting. The letter, asking either Creitz or Bowie to quash the recall effort, was signed by French, Callahan, Rowe, Jim Kilby and Beverly Franklin, as well as the mayor. Councilmen Donald Becker and Joel Wicoff did not sign the letter. Councilman Scott Stewart said he would hold off on signing until hearing a report on the matter from Bowie.
Bowie was unavailable for comment Thursday and Friday following several attempts by the Register to reach him.
CALLAHAN also spoke on the second allegation — that he and Rowe improperly called for executive sessions without a justification statement.
Executive sessions are private gatherings for public bodies to discuss such things as non-elected personnel or to handle matters protected by attorney-client privilege.
“I hate to throw Chuck (Apt, Iola city attorney) under the bus, but we asked him on several occasions if we were doing it properly, and he told us we were,” Callahan said.
It should also be noted that previous city commissions, school boards and other governing bodies have called for executive sessions without justification statements.
“What it means is they’re seeking a recall against us on what basically is a technicality every governing body has violated for the past 100 years,” Callahan said.
As an aside, the Iola city council members in recent meetings have added justification statements when calling for executive sessions.
“IT SEEMS like we’ve been the whipping boys for everything that people are mad about with the city,” Rowe said.
The criticism has an impetus: the council’s firing last August of former City Administrator Judy Brigham about three weeks before she was to retire with the city after 32 years of employment.
The firing touched off a firestorm of criticism in subsequent council meetings. Some of the most vocal critics formed IGG shortly thereafter.
“I don’t like to say ‘woe is me,’ but we seem to have been targeted since we were called unchristian,” Callahan added, referring to comments from former Mayor John McRae, who called Brigham’s firing “one of the cruelest, most unchristian, unforgivable things that I’ve ever heard a city council do to an employee.”
Callahan noted Brigham’s dismissal was voted on by six of the seven council members at that meeting.
“If I have to fire somebody, I’m not going to do it if I don’t have supporting evidence on my side,” Callahan said.
French, too, wondered why only Rowe and Callahan were targeted by IGG.
Actually, others were considered for recall, responded IGG member Gayle Campbell.
Petitions were formulated for as many as five council members, as well as the mayor.
“But we couldn’t recall the entire council, and it appeared recalling these two had the most support,” Campbell said. She declined to identify the other three council members targeted for recall.
Campbell pointed to the petition that notes the committees Rowe and Callahan served on were subject to KOMA because they had been formally recognized by the council.
“If you read the petitions, you can see that they have nothing to do with Judy,” Campbell said. “It’s about the open meetings violations.”
