33 SECOND "INVESTIGATIONS" BELIE SLRB CLAIM OF OPEN MEETINGS EXCEPTION
"Why does the Rhode Island State Labor Relations Board (SLRB) decide behind closed doors whether or not a case will be given a hearing?" asked Ocean State Policy Research Institute (OSPRI) President Bill Felkner today. "This seems like the most public of its possible actions and yet it is the most secretive."
And how much time is put into those decisions? New research on the past year of SLRB meetings shows that these closed sessions afforded as little as 33 seconds for investigating each matter raised. Over the last year, on average, the board afforded a much more generous minute and 25 seconds per case.
OSPRI is all for efficient government, but it certainly seems that the investigative technique of the SLRB is deficient. Maybe a lack of attention to detail explains why the Board declined to issue a complaint against the East Providence Education Association (the Union) when the East Providence School Committee (EPSC) alleged a refusal to bargain, but the SLRB decided to hold a hearing when the Union made similar charges against the school committee.
"Basically, the Union refused to negotiate with the EPSC until they agreed to hide the negotiations from the public and accepted the Union's interpretation of the Town Charter," said Felkner. "But the SLRB apparently didn't have a problem with that. The real kicker is that they did think the union's charge had merit, and it gave no details of obstruction at all."
"This strikes me more as a question about our government's efforts in transparency than anything else," Felkner explained. "Throughout these preliminaries, the Union was on notice that the EPSC was willing to proceed to substantive contract negotiations without setting ground rules but the Union refused to move while there was any chance whatsoever that the taxpayers and City Council would get a look."
The school committee's charge raised the issue of whether failure to agree on ground rules is a stalemate in negotiations that requires arbitration or, if one party is particularly stubborn, is it an unfair labor practice that ought to be remedied under the SLRB process? This seems like a legitimate question for a hearing, but the SLRB, meeting in closed session, dismissed the charges "administratively". And no record of their proceedings or the basis for the decision is available.
"Is it simply coincidental that the Union sought to keep the public in the dark and the SLRB does the same thing," asked Felkner, "from contract negotiations to administrative interpretation of law, when will the public finally get to see how our government runs and spends our money?"
By law, such proceedings must be open unless a recorded vote is taken to close the meeting and an explicit exemption under 42-46-5(a) is cited. Any votes taken in closed session must be reported. But SLRB minutes consistently failed to report "the vote of each member on the question of holding a meeting closed to the public and the reason for holding a closed meeting" as required by 42-46-4, and conspicuously fail to report the votes of members taken in these close sessions.
The only remotely applicable exception to the Open Meeting Act that would allow a closed session is that for "any investigative proceedings regarding allegations of misconduct, either civil or criminal". But these board "investigations" averaged a minute and a half for the 44 cases reviewed in the last year and lately are down to about 30 seconds. For instance, last year's Nov. 18th executive session at which the East Providence School Committee's charges against the Teachers' Union were summarily dismissed lasted only five minutes and eight separate cases were decided, that's an average of 37.5 seconds each.
While OSPRI has been a campaigner for transparency across the spectrum of government we are of course now focused on the Board because it is ground zero in the fight to reform government or face civic bankruptcies.
"Do these actions show a bias by the SLRB to favor labor's position or is labor just the repeated victim of unprofessional management?" Felkner continued, "A layman's view of the East Providence situation suggests bias, but since the process is hidden we can only make assumptions. Still, given the critical juncture in state policy, it would be irresponsible not to report what little we can glean about the operations of the SLRB".
For those who think we're being unfair to the board in our criticism because we can only draw inferences from limited data, we would suggest the board is being unfair to itself by not providing the basis for all of its decisions and operating in secret with no justification. That leaves its actions open to speculation. We are attempting to engage in the most informed speculation we can and hopefully the Board's conformance with the letter and spirit of the open meetings law will leave less to guess-work in the future.
Further analysis and documentation of claims is available at www.lrbwatch.org.
"And if you're in the Cranston neighborhood on Thursday," said Felkner. "You might want to stob by the hearing and ask the SLRB to protect your right to a transparency government."
The State Labor Relations Board hearing will be held at 9:00 AM, Thursday, March 18, 2009, at the Department of Labor building - Cranston-bldg 73, 1511 Pontiac Ave., Cranston, RI.
About OSPRI:
Created in 2007, our work is focused on crafting sound public policy based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, and traditional American values. We offer timely research and analysis on important issues to be shared with elected officials, the media, business leaders, community organizations and individual citizens. In recent months, we have been responsible for such successful projects as the Transparency Train - A public financial and legislative information repository, as well as regular updates published and available on our website and companion blog.
About The Transparency Train:
The Transparency Train Web Portal (www.transparencytrain.org) provides access to a variety of websites designed to present public information in a Google-style searchable format. These sites include:
RI Data which contains every budget, payroll, public employee contract and monthly check register for all cities, towns and school districts in Rhode Island.
RI Votes which is an online database of legislation and voting records.
LRB Watch provides analysis and information on the State Labor Relations Board.
RI Schools is an interactive website that allows viewers to create comparative graphs of school districts plotting various metrics such as cost per student, test scores and the number of employees (coming Spring 2009).
RI Donors will contain a "connect the dots" approach to viewing political and lobbying finances (coming Fall 2009).
Take Action, a "how-to" manual that shows citizens how to file Freedom Of Information Act requests for public information and what to do if they don't comply.
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