CINCINNATI — Ohio public meeting laws, or Sunshine Laws, are clear when it comes to public commissions making decisions on policy, personnel and other business matters.
The Hamilton County Veterans Commission falls under those requirements when holding their monthly meetings, but after attending their last two meetings, it’s become clear that things are a little cloudy when it comes to the responsibilities of public officials while conducting the meetings.
When the commission meets on the second Wednesday of the month, they always start with the Pledge of Allegiance. The pledge is followed by the approval of past meeting minutes and then comes their executive session.
This is the portion of their meeting that began to raise concerns as it pertains to Ohio law.
On Nov. 8, 2023, Veterans Commission president Robert Brewster said, “We need to go into executive session.” Administrative Assistant Pam Minser said, “Do we have a motion to go into executive session?” Commissioner Jerry Rowland responded with, “Yeah we have some cases we want to discuss.”
“The way that this motion was initiated ... it really did not follow the letter of the law,” said Darren Ford, an attorney at law with Faruki PLL who is an expert on Ohio Sunshine Laws.
Ford said to go into an executive session there needs to be very specific reasons stated for what will be discussed as well as a full vote.
“The idea is you're supposed to cite the specific reason, statutory authorization, for that executive session in the motion so that at least those observing the meeting will know this is what we're going into that session to talk about," said Ford.
When the commission came out of that session, they voted on the several financial cases presumably discussed while in that session. A short time later in open discussion, it became clear that more than financial statements were discussed in the executive session.
When the commissioners were being pressured by veterans in attendance about the absence of the current VSO executive director, Member at Large Commissioner Bill Froehle said, "We had a discussion earlier, in Executive session earlier where we discussed personnel issues and that's probably all I should say at this point."
To reiterate, there was never a discussion ahead of the executive session that they were going to discuss anything other than "cases" during that time.
"The idea with the executive session is to allow for deliberations on certain topics in private, as long as they aren't making any sort of formal decisions inside the executive session," said Ford. "That should be made in front of the public because the way you would do that — you deliberate in executive session, for instance, on a personnel issue, you would have that divorced deliberation in executive session, and that the extent that there was going to be a formal decision or something made that needed to be made in public, you'd come out of the executive session and go back on the record and have that formal decision made in public.
"So, you would separate it like that. You wouldn't make the formal decision and then announce it later, or something sometime down the road," Ford said. "That decision, once it's made, has to be made in public."
But that’s exactly what the Veterans Service Commission did when they went in front of the Hamilton County Commission the next day, announcing that they were appointing an interim executive director while their current director was out due to health issues.
Referencing the Nov. 8 meeting, Commissioner Froehle told Hamilton County Commissioners, "At that executive session yesterday we made the decision to bring on Calvin Wooten."
Ford said the lack of clarification and proper procedures from the Nov. 8 meeting just leads to layers of questions when it comes to when the decision was made.
"Was it made in the executive session? That's a problem. Was it made some point after that — just one on one? I mean, these are questions that we can't answer in the abstract," Ford said. "These are questions that if the Open Meetings Act procedures had been followed, we'd have more information to be able to say, you know, conclusively, this is when these decisions were made."
As WCPO reported Nov. 14, the Veterans Service Administrative Assistant confirmed Commissioner Rowland had come into the office on Monday, Nov. 13 to tell all employees that Wooten wasn’t the interim executive director and that William ‘Bill’ Boettcher remained in the role.
RELATED | Hamilton County Veterans Service Executive Director takes back reins, works from home
WCPO’s Craig McKee asked Minser specifically if a special meeting was called to make the personnel switch, to which she replied there had not been.
At the VSC’s next regular meeting in December, McKee asked Commissioner Rowland to walk him through the decision process and asked Rowland directly if a special meeting was called to make the personnel change to which Rowland replied, "No, I didn’t realize we were supposed to."
Rowland said a phone call took place between all the commissioners to make the decision, again, something done out of the public eye with no public knowledge of the decisions being made that impact the Veterans Service Operations.
"It's very concerning," Ford said. "You know, we expect our public officials to understand the Sunshine laws, whether that's the Public Records Act, the Open Meetings Act, that they exist."
Up until November 2023, the VSC meetings were basically only attended by the commissioners, the Veterans Service Office executive administrator and the office’s executive director. The VSC’s meeting minutes over the past five years show there hasn’t been a single veteran speaking during the open discussion period of the meeting.
That all changed after WCPO’s Homefront investigation took a closer look at the VSC budgetary spending as compared to other county VSCs.
RELATED | Veterans say Hamilton County's system is broken, call for statewide changes
The Nov. 8 regular meeting was attended by a handful of veterans concerned about what they had read in those reports. December’s meeting was also attended by a handful of veterans. In both meetings, they had time to speak during the open discussion section of the meeting.
There’s one other fact that stands out as WCPO took a closer look at how these meetings have operated over the past five years. A review of five years of meeting minutes, provided to WCPO from a public records request, reveals that in those five years, the commission has made motions to increase salaries, pay employees bonuses, increase their annual cost of living and change dates of meetings.
However, there’s no officially introduced motion documented over the past five years that changes or introduces any new policies that impact veterans.
If you have a veteran story to tell in your community, email homefront@wcpo.com. You also can join the Homefront Facebook group, follow Craig McKee on Facebook and find more Homefront stories here.
