Private talks to choose new Boston Council president were legal, city lawyer says
Discussions that took place behind closed doors and resulted in Boston City Councilor Liz Breadon unexpectedly taking on the role of council president in January did not violate the state's open meeting law, a city attorney said this week.
While two other councilors visited Breadon's home on the night before the Jan. 5 council vote, a quorum — a majority of the 13-member council — was not present, Corporation Counsel Michael Firestone determined this week, according to the Boston Herald .
Communications between the councilors outside of that meeting also did not constitute deliberations outside of a public meeting, he added.
City Councilor Ed Flynn, who filed the open meeting law complaint that prompted the Law Department's review, said that he intended to pursue his complaint further to the state Attorney General's Office.
"The Boston City Council must be transparent and accountable to the public," Flynn told the Herald. "We can't ignore state law just because we disagree with the law."
Breadon said in January that she hadn't considered running for council president until less than 24 hours before the vote, when some of her colleagues approached her about it.
Previously, Councilors Gabriela Coletta Zapata and Brian Worrell were the top candidates for the role, which is traditionally won through closed-door campaigning between councilors.
However, just a couple of days before the vote, Coletta Zapata, a strong ally of Mayor Michelle Wu, said she would no longer be seeking the top post, leaving Worrell the presumptive winner.
But in the final hours, other councilors with strong ties to Wu convinced Breadon to throw her name in the ring. She won in a 7-6 vote.
Despite some conflict during the voting meeting, where multiple councilors objected to what they saw as secrecy and a lack of transparency in the process.
Flynn filed his complaint on Feb. 1 against the City Council as a whole, writing that "late-night in-person meetings, sequential office-to-office contacts, and the use of intermediaries" violated the rules governing public meetings.
"Even if no single gathering involved a quorum, the Open Meeting Law prohibits serial deliberations and the use of intermediaries to reach agreement outside a properly noticed public meeting," he wrote. "The conduct was not reasonably discoverable when it occurred and became discoverable only after subsequent public disclosures and reporting."
He requested that the state attorney general conduct a full investigation into what occurred and that the council create a plan to avoid a similar situation during the next election for City Council president.
Boston Politics
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