Seattle mayor, council want closed budget talks

The Seattle City Council wants to discuss midyear cuts to the city general fund in a series of closed-door meetings with the mayor's staff, budget committee chairwoman Jean Godden said.

The private meetings raise a question about whether the council would be skirting the state's Open Public Meetings Act.

The council learned this week that the general fund will be nearly $43 million short this year and $41 million short next year, based on expected revenues. Cuts are expected, along with the use of the city's rainy-day savings.

Mayor Greg Nickels could make many changes to the budget on his own, but he asked to include council members in small, private meetings as a way to keep them in the loop. Any votes or major decisions the council makes will happen publicly, in council committee meetings scheduled for the next several Mondays, officials said.

Alex Fryer, a spokesman for Nickels, said the smaller meetings would allow decision-makers to "float an idea" and speak more openly than they could in public meetings, he said. "You want to do that in a more private fashion."

Council members said they oppose closed-door meetings in general but said there's no reason to bore the public with complex briefings and logistical decisions.

"I don't like much behind closed doors, and so it seems to me that all tax information ... should be completely transparent," Councilmember Bruce Harrell said. "From a practical standpoint, I think there should be meetings to discuss ideas or perhaps the process itself, but all decisions, all meaningful discussion, should be transparent in front of the public."

He added: "It's a waste of time to meet in public to ask simple questions."

Under the state's open-meetings act, if a "quorum" — or a majority — of an elected body meets, the meeting must be open to the public.

Since there are nine council members, the council plans to meet in groups of four. Godden said the meetings are scheduled with various members so that all would get the same briefings at different times.

"There's not enough council members to be requiring any kind of open meeting, and mostly what we're going though is just process," she said. "It's very dull stuff that no one would really care about."

The mayor asked for the closed-door meetings, Godden said, and she agreed so the council could stay involved.

"It's a courtesy. People always say, 'Why don't you branches of government get along?' and then when we get along, they say, 'Ah, you're not doing open government.' "

Dozens of groups that could be affected by the cuts have been lobbying the council for several weeks. On Tuesday, a group of advocates for services to the low-income presented a petition to the council, asking that their budgets be kept whole.

"This is where government is at its best or at its worst," said Paul Haas, who presented the petition. Haas is a development director for Solid Ground, which provides services to the homeless and others in need. "If anything, this is a time for ... listening to the community, and the most transparency that you can bring to this."

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com