An open government complaint that may have helped sway the outcome of the Democratic mayoral primary was dismissed this month by the state Freedom of Information Commission.
The panel ruled that the “script” that former city Councilor Ellen Zoppo wrote to guide Mayor William Stortz and most of her colleagues through a crucial meeting about downtown almost a year ago did not violate open government laws.
There was never a secret session “to plan how to manipulate discussion” at the January 4 public meeting or to dictate its outcome, the commission ruled.
The state’s decision clears Zoppo of wrongdoing in the case brought by resident Jay Meisinger.
Zoppo, the Democrat’s endorsed mayoral candidate, lost a September 11 primary to challenger Art Ward, a longtime city councilor who went on to win the general election in November. She no longer holds a political position.
The case arose because of an Ordinance Committee meeting in January that Zoppo chaired.
Zoppo wrote out a detailed “script” for the meeting that gave the City Council’s approval to the new downtown corporation. She later called it “talking points” and expressed the wish that she’d never used the word script.
In its ruling, the FOI Commission said that Zoppo’s “use of the term ‘script’ and the level of detail that the script contains reasonably gave rise to the complainant’s suspicion of a secretly manipulated meeting and pre-determined decisions.”
But the panel determined that Zoppo and other city leaders did not actually orchestrate the session improperly.
However, the commission advised Zoppo and the city “to re-evaluate such use of scripted procedure and discussion in public meetings” in the future.
The panel said that it believed Zoppo “prepared the script in an effort to keep the January 4, 2007 meeting ‘on topic’ and to make sure that council members would have an opportunity to express their views on the agenda topics in an orderly manner” rather than to dictate the outcome.
Zoppo gave copies of the script to Stortz and to every city councilor except Ward, who was deliberately iced out.
The commission determined that Zoppo “did not share the script” with Ward “because she believed it would be counter-productive, in light of her experience that he had behaved with hostility toward her” and other city leaders.
It said that Zoppo “testified that she wanted to avoid ‘another verbal barrage’ by” Ward so she kept the script secret from him.
The incident came to light in June when the Press received, in response to a Freedom of Information request, copies of emails between Stortz and Zoppo that discussed the script. Zoppo readily provided copies of the script when the Press asked her about it.
Here is the link to the state's ruling.
For background, check out these earlier Bristol Blog posts:
Is Ward behind the FOI complaint? (Aug. 10, 2007)
Mocabee speaks out on FOI complaint (Aug. 10, 2007)
FOI complaint lodged against Zoppo, Stortz, city (Aug. 10, 2007, includes text of FOI complaint)
Council hopeful Rich Kilby weighs in on script controversy (June 10, 2007)
McCauley defends Zoppo (June 8, 2007)
Zoppo stands by scripted meetings (June 6, 2007)
What do you think about scripting city meetings? (June 5, 2007)
Scripting city meetings (June 5, 2007, includes the script used for the January meeting)
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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
34 comments:
I don't care what the FOI states - Zoppo did what she always does - tries to control everything. But Bristol is better off now that she is out of city govt.
hmmmm ..... I guess that Ms. Zoppo did NOTHING wrong .... Hey .... at least all the lies got artie in office ....
Absolutely, because things have been GOING so well since she left the council.
Of course you "don't care what the FOI states".
Why let the truth get in the way of your hatred?
Bristol sucks because of people like you.
Considering that progress is being made and the fence is up ready for demolition, I am at least glad someone had the ability to organize or SCRIPT whatever it took to get this on the right track last year instead of sitting in the corner and criticizing everything, and not lifting a finger to do anything productive. The corporation is on track and things are happening. Enough already.
GEE...one lone citizen against Zoppo and her team of hungry lawyers, and the citizen lost...go figure! The truth is that Ms. Zoppo never denied that she did what she did (there were no "lies"). The FOI only exposed her pompous attitude to the public...and the voters didn't like what they saw...end of story.
AMEN!!! Good Bye to this chapter in E`S LIFE!!! GOD BLESS us everyone.
Can we now all just let this go! I for one am sick of hearing about it.
Just get something done for the citizens of Bristol and stop all the blaming and bickering.
AMEN
the only question that remains is what position Jay Meisinger will get within city govt or boards as his reward.
Jay will get none. So make another stupid comment.
Ellen Zoppo was an excellent councilperson and this issue stupidly affected the Primary and is the type of politics that people hate, and what turns people off to becoming involved in politics or any other type of public service. I wish the Mr. Ward well, for all of our sakes, but I do not appreciate these type of campaign tactics.
bottom line is that zoppo tried to muscle her way to getting what she wanted by eliminating another elected official from the process. Don't ever recall that the voter's ever intended to elect a dictatoress.
"bottom line is that zoppo tried to muscle her way to getting what she wanted by eliminating another elected official from the process."
Due to your pathological hatred for Ellen (and for competent government, apparently), you have conveniently forgotten what the point of the so-called "illegal meeting" was. It was to make sure that all aspects of Mayor Stortz's BDDC ordinance were thoroughly discussed at the up-coming public meeting. Art Ward needed to demonize her to win the primary, and he succeeded. God help Bristol.
..."pathological hatred for Ellen." Someone's being just a tad over dramatic. As far as Mr. Ward having to "demonize her to win the primary"...I'd say she did a pretty good job all by herself. Competent government seems to have won after all...
You must have started partying early if you are using "competent government" and Art Ward in the same sentence.
.....get over the trivial banter and realize that the populace has spoken and elected ward to be the mayor for the next two years and ellen, used her savy to get a $50,000 dollar a year sloff job from the boy's club, where she will use the same tactics to engineer the ouster of Ron Burns so that she will better her own position - history does repeat itself - watch out Ron, watch your back.
...AMEN!
Ellen Zoppo = Competent government?
BARF!!!
YOU must have hit the eggnog early, pal.
It was obviously very borderline. They warned the council not to do it again and said that the circumstances DID warrant an investigation, but the only reason it wasn't deemed inappropriate was because the votes weren't pre-determined in the script.
There is no such thing as "inappropriate". There is only "legal" and "illegal" and the FOIC determined that Zoppo's meeting with the Mayor was legal. Unfortunately the FOIC felt the need to pander to a conspiracy-theory obsessed individual and told Zoppo that she shouldn't do it again, because the world is full of conspiracy-theory obsessed individuals and this is somehow Zoppo's fault.
I seriously doubt that the FOIC felt the need to "pander to a conspiracy-obsessed individual." The complaint had nothing to do with "conspiracy" and everything to do with one sanctimonious city official's devisive, egomaniacal,INAPPROPRIATE behavior...
The bottom line is that the people saw Ellen for what she is, a controlling, power hungry politician. She only talked to people that could do things for her and she hated city employees. Hard to believe seeing that her husband is one.
Good riddens, Bristol is better off!
.....morality can't be dictated by legality
".....morality can't be dictated by legality"
Sure it can. That's what our ethics laws do, and our open government laws. What Ellen did was perfectly moral, legal, intelligent, and appropriate. Art needed to demonize her to win the primary so he told his political lackey to file the complaint. He took advantage of peoples' gullibility and their subconscious desire to see Richard Nixon in every politician, for his own selfish politican ambitions.
...Again with the demonization of Ellen thing??!! What Ellen did may have been legal, but it was certainly NOT moral,intelligent or appropriate. I think you're seriously underestimating the intelligence of the "gullible" voters...they seem to know when they smell a rat.
Steve, this is directed at the Press. When the "scripting" first broke out, it was front page news. When she was exonerated, it was on page 11 and not a SCREAMING headline. Shame on the Press for vilifying her and then when she is found to be innocent of all charges, it is tucked in the back of the Press. This is not an attack on you, Steve, since you say you don't write the headlines, but it is very obvious that a mountain was made out of a mole hill and a good councilwoman was trashed. Regardless of how you feel about her, she got the job done. In the future the Press should stop acting like The Enquirer and just report the news instead of sensationalizing it. Yes, it could actually change the outcome of an election and don't think it doesn't. Ms. Zoppo is living proof!
And by the way ... since when was writing an outline immoral, unintelligent or inappropriate? I'd hate to attend a meeting with any of you who believe the "scripting" was as mentioned above. Your meetings must be total chaos!
The initial story -- the one with the "screaming headline" -- did not accuse Zoppo of violating any open government laws. So the exoneration she received from the FOI Commission was only tangentially tied to the story I wrote, which was mostly a look at how city officials orchestrated the session that established the downtown corporation. So there really isn't a disconnect between the placement of the first story and the one about the FOI ruling.
However, I will say that there often is a disparity in coverage, not because anyone's trying to manipulate public opinion but because cover stories are chosen each day on a rather simple criteria: what do the editors think will sell best on the newsstand?
If I ran the world, and didn't have to consider making money, choices would be made differently. But I don't see much likelihood that I'll get that power anytime soon.
"Since when was writing an outline immoral,unintelligent or inappropriate?" It's not, but the scripting, the deliberate exclusion of a fellow councilman along with blatant disrespect for most city officials and employees IS immoral, unintelligent and very inappropriate...
To the last poster ... she was EXONERATED! What part of that word don't YOU understand? She did nothing wrong so stop the execution! By the way, only ONE councilman was excluded and that was because HE didn't want to be included.
As far as coverage, Steve, I still believe that the article was tucked neatly away. I know the Press is attempting to sell papers, but why do they think her exoneration wouldn't be something people would be interested in reading as a headline? It certainly was interesting enough to make it headline news initially. Why does the negative always have to be the selling point? Here was something positive, but God forbid it ends up as a headline.
I'm sorry for perpetuating this, but I still feel there were other factors given with regard to the decision to keep it off the front page. I'm not in the newspaper business, but out of courtesy for her and anyone else who is wrongly accused, the exoneration should be stated as loudly and obviously as the accusation was.
Yes, it was on page 11, which might not have been my preference. But, then again, I'd just as soon every one of my stories was a big banner headline. ;)
On the other hand, the front page that day had some immediate news about the city knocking down somebody's garage on North Main Street and, even better, we had a good photograph of it. A juicy picture is worth 1,000 words.
Honestly, though, I knew about the Zoppo story days earlier but I couldn't write it for a simple reason: I was off for a full week before I wrote it. I had that one day - Friday the 28th -- when I was working so I had to bang it out then or it would have sat until at least the Jan. 3 paper. This time of year, things get a little messed up.
As far as the treating an exoneration as big as the initial charge (and keep in mind the initial story had nothing to do with the FOI hearing), I sort of agree. But, again, the editors working on a holiday week may have had no idea at all that this was part of a continuing story. Some are new. Some don't usually read my copy. You can imagine how that goes, too.
It's not like anyone was trying to cover up the FOI decision. I wrote about it. It was in the paper. I posted the ruling on this blog.
There is, in the end, only so much I can do.
Steve, I never said there was a cover up. My only concern is that stories that unintentionally hurt someone politically, with the final decision coming after the election has been said and done, should be given priority when the final outcome is given. Sorry for the confusing way I wrote that. In this case Ms. Zoppo was exonerated. Would the Press have made it a front page headline had she not been exonerated? I bet you it would just because, as you say, that "stuff" sells papers.
I'm not blaming you. I'm just stating that more of an effort should be made when it comes to something this important regardless if the intial story was the FOI or not. We all know that the FOI became as big a story as the orchestration of the session that became the downtown committee, if not even bigger, as was proven in the primary.
I have seen you write that editors may not know that there was an initial story or the importance of the story when justifying a headline or importance of an article. Perhaps in the future something can be done to communicate the importance of something you have written so that fairness exists across the board.
I know you're extremely busy and that may not be possible, but in this instance I do believe the initial "sensational" headline giving the impression of impropriety was not followed up with an equally "sensational" headline exonerating her.
I'll let it lie now that I've bantered back and forth with you on it. This is just food for thought, because I'm sure these issues will come up again and I would like to see fairness to everyone involved. Thank you for listening to what I have to say and for printing my concerns.
I for got to thank you for allowing us to speak our peace and thanks for monitoring this site. I can only imagine some of the stuff that would get through if you weren't so vigilant.
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