Blog: Cuyahoga County Commissioner Tim Hagan complains about stories on secret meetings, then goes into secret meeting

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cuyahoga County Commissioner Tim Hagan complained again today about a Plain Dealer story that reported on how commissioners spend more than twice as much time behind closed doors as in open session.

“This board is trying to conduct the business of the public in an honorable way,” Hagan said during the commissioners’ weekly meeting. “When you write stories that have no substance except for the point, I guess, to undermine the credibility of the board, you ought to be held accountable for it.”

Then, minutes later, Hagan and fellow Commissioners Peter Lawson Jones and Jimmy Dimora voted to go into another executive session, this time to talk in secret about the long-proposed sale of the downtown Ameritrust complex, personnel matters and pending litigation.

The newspaper examined minutes from the last nine months of meetings and found that the commissioners, citing one exemption after another to the state’s open-meeting laws, went into executive sessions during 33 of 38 meetings.

They have spent a combined 94 hours — the equivalent of nearly four days — talking privately about public business since Sept. 9, 2008, when the county first started keeping digital recordings of meetings.

For the story, Catherine Turcer of Ohio Citizen Action, said commissioners should handle more business in public given that Commissioner Jimmy Dimora and Auditor Frank Russo are focuses of a sweeping public corruption investigation of county government.

“I’m surprised they didn’t attempt to create as open a process as possible at that point,” Turcer said. “It shows a lack of shame.”

Dimora, who has not been charged with a crime and has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, said little during the open portion of today’s meeting and did not immediately join Hagan and Jones behind closed doors.

He went into a separate room of the county administration building. Emerging 40 minutes later, he announced to reporters, “Happy Fourth of July to all your audiences.”

Then, he too went into secret session.

Joe Guillen, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland.com, July 02, 2009 11:19AM

Go to Original.