Warner Says Closed Session Could be Justified

At least one member of Hyattsville's City Council has come out in favor of using a closed session to discuss aspects of a controversial budget measure, so long as they stick to appropriate closed session topics. 

Yesterday, in emails sent to fellow city council members and Hyattsville Patch, Councilor Shani Warner (Ward 2) outlined her position on the prospect of using closed sessions to

"I think it's appropriate to give the Mayor the closed session he claims is necessary, not because it clearly is, but because it's at least conceivable that there is information about individual employees that may serve as background and influence our (open session) deliberations about whether it's appropriate to have acting corporal positions," wrote Warner in an email to Patch. "At the same time it's important to be careful not to overstep the bounds of what we are allowed to discuss in closed session."

Warner will be out of town next week when the budget matter is expected to return before the city council. Mayor Marc Tartaro, at last week's meeting, said that at least some portion of the discussion of the police budget should be held behind closed doors to avoid infringing upon the privacy of employees who would be affected by changes to police personnel classifications. 

However, Rulings by the state Open Meetings Compliance Board have said that discussions of personnel matters which affect a class of employees, as opposed to specific individuals, should be held in open session. 

"Although I did not know the distinction between discussion of individual personnel matters and those pertaining to a class, we are fortunate to have the presence of the City Attorney who is quite familiar with the rules when we go into closed session," wrote Warner. "He makes sure that we stay on appropriate subjects.  Moreover, the Council Members themselves are good at reigning in any attempts to wander off topic, but those attempts are rare, inadvertent, and quickly squelched."

The police budget debate centers on a In mid-April, the city council approved a police department budget which laid out a 32-person patrol division split between six sergeants, seven corporals and 19 privates. 

However, the omnibus budget bill distributed to the city council at the end of April contains a different staffing layout. That measure calls for eight sergeants, three corporals, two acting corporals and 19 privates. 

Currently, the city has three acting corporals and one acting sergeant, all in the patrol division.

Police Chief Doug Holland objected to the changes in the omnibus budget bill, saying that it was not his intention to reduce the number of corporals in the police department. 

Mayor Marc Tartaro and Council Vice President David Hiles (Ward 2) said during this week's council meeting that the police department budget passed in April provided for two additional sergeant positions to allow corporals to advance up the ladder. Indeed, the term "ladder position" was used frequently during discussion of the police department staffing at Monday's meeting. Tartaro and Hiles said that such a ladder position was never intended to create additional corporal positions.

In emails to council colleagues, Warner said that she was not aware of any discussion of how instituting ladder positions would affect the number of sergeants or corporals. 

"I believed this matter had already been ironed out separately to the satisfaction (or at least mutual understanding) of the Mayor and the Chief of Police.  Perhaps this was a misperception due to my ignorance of the term "ladder position" and all that it conveys, but, if so, I was not the only person to make that mistake," wrote Warner. "Of course that does not address the question of the sudden appearance of the acting corporal positions in the midst of this process."

"My current impression of the situation before us is that I would prefer to change the two acting corporal positions to corporals," continued Warner in her email. "I don't have the information that you either have or will have, but I look forward to watching you resolve this relatively minor point."