The Burlington City Council agreed with a complaint filed against the body by Seven Days, alleging that the council broke the state’s open meeting law during a Sept. 8 emergency session.
In a 9-3 vote Monday night, the council voted in favor of a motion that the body illegally invited Battery Park protesters into an executive session discussion about the three Burlington Police officers who protesters have been calling for the city to fire for the past three weeks.
The protesters, who did not identify themselves by their full names and could not be seen over Zoom, told councilors they had information they couldn’t share with the public at last week’s meeting.
Seven Days alleges that during the Sept. 8 meeting “nothing presented publicly suggested that the protesters possessed any privileged information regarding the conduct of the three police officers,” which the news organization argues violates executive session rules.
According to Vermont law, executive sessions are limited to the public body, its staff, attorneys and “persons who are subjects of the discussion or whose information is needed.”
The vote directly contradicted advice given to councilors during the Monday night meeting by City Attorney Eileen Blackwood, who said that she did not think the council violated open meeting guidelines.
She explained to councilors that her interpretation of the law is that it gives the body discretion to decide who they could bring into an executive session. She said this allows the council flexibility to determine if they want to ask certain questions behind closed doors in an effort to protect the city’s interests.
“It would be important for us to defend that there was no violation because City Council should have the right to decide does it wants to invite certain people in because they think that group has information,” Blackwood said. “I don’t think it translates to a violation if it turns out that you decided, once they were there, that you didn’t need that information.”
Despite this, some councilors still felt a mistake had been made.
“When we’re asked to decide if something we have done is in violation of the law, we are really required to hold ourselves to a standard that is absolutely the highest standard,” said Councilor Brian Pine, P-Ward 3. “In order to do that, we need to essentially acknowledge the mistake.”
Councilor Perri Freeman, P-Central, agreed with Pine that the council should hold itself to a higher level of accountability.
“We make policy and we make laws and those are pretty incredible powers that we possess as a body,” Freeman said. “I don’t believe that bodies like ours should deliberate in secret.”
Others, like Councilor Ali Dieng, I-Ward 7, disagreed. He said the council should retain its right to private discussions that Blackwood said the council has, according to her interpretation of the current law.
“There was no motion that we would deliver,” Dieng said. “It was just a conversation [with the] community, a special meeting.”
Dieng, Jack Hanson, P-East, and Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1, voted against the motion to accept fault for the violation. The council will discuss at next week’s meeting how it will “cure” the violation.
In its complaint, Seven Days demands that the council release the names and titles of everyone who attended the executive session and details about how long members of the public attended the session, in order to rectify the violation. It also requested an explanation from the council about why having protesters testify in public about personnel matters “put the city at a substantial disadvantage,” as justified by the council.
It also requested any notes, memos or minutes taken of the session and that the council “immediately discontinue its abuse of executive session and conduct trainings on the open meeting law to ensure this does not happen again.”
The council entered into executive session later on Monday night, just after 11:30 p.m., to discuss legal strategies around the federal lawsuit alleging excessive use of force against BPD Officer Jason Bellavance. The executive session was also to continue discussions about the three BPD officers that protesters have been calling to be fired.
This came after another round of passionate pleas from Burlington residents during a two-hour public comment period demanding that the officers be fired. Many residents recognized the legal constraints limiting councilors’ power to unilaterally remove the officers. Still, they demanded they find a way.
Some of the residents called in from a City Council watch party where the Zoom meeting was projected onto a giant inflatable screen outside City Hall. Approximately 200 protesters gathered for the sit-in, as part of their weeks-long protest calling for the firing of Bellavance, Cory Campbell and Joseph Corrow from the BPD.
The demonstrators sang, danced, ate dinner, and did homework in their takeover of Church Street before the meeting began.
“This could be the most important night of all of them,” one protest leader said to the group, who are in their third straight week of 24/7 protesting. “It’s make or break, folks.”
Cheers and chants ranged from a land acknowledgement for the stolen land of the Abenaki people to songs and dances with refrains of “I want a revolution” and “you about to lose your job.”
The meeting began with some occasional boos from the protesters in response to comments made by city leaders, but then switched to cheers and applause during the public comment portion of the meeting, which featured almost entirely citizens encouraging the City Council to support the demands of the protest.
“As a person of color who has suffered from racism all my life, it astonishes me that the mayor and the members on this council say they support the elimination of systemic racism and yet have shown no intention to fire racist and violent cops Jason Bellavance, Cory Campbell and Joseph Corrrow,” said resident Issac Lee, during his public comment.
“How can you say that you wish to eliminate systemic racism when you yourself are the very epitome of it?” he continued.
Safe injection site to be explored
The council also unanimously passed a resolution to move forward on a proposal to construct an overdose prevention site, or a safe injection site, in Burlington. In 2018, the council passed a resolution that endorsed the establishment of such a site. The resolution passed tonight intends to take the city closer to that goal.
Overdose prevention sites are medically supervised safe injection locations where those struggling with opioid use can receive the help and services they need to safely overcome their addiction.
Under this resolution, the city attorney is charged with assessing what regulations and laws the city would have to abide by in order to construct one of these sites, and report back findings at the council’s first meeting in November.
It also charges the city’s opioid manager to work with the Howard Center to construct a plan for what an overdose prevention site would look like in Burlington, including a funding model. That report is due to the council at its second December meeting.
VTDigger reporter Ellie French contributed reporting.
