Idle chitchat caught on tape between two Cook County commissioners before the board’s Tuesday, May 8 meeting has caused quite a stir.
A conversation between Commissioner Heidi Doo-Kirk and Commissioner Ginny Storlie left Nick and Carol Burger stunned. According to Nick, Heidi asked Ginny, “Are you going to put the Burgers on the budget committee?” To which Ginny made a horrible noise of obvious disapproval and then stated, “not unless I am desperate.”
The 20 minutes or so caught on tape before the meeting began was taken off of the public transcript sometime later in the day. The county board meetings are recorded and aired on Boreal Access for those who want to watch the proceedings.
Over the last two years the Burgers, who spent their careers working in government finance in the Twin Cities before retiring and moving to Cook County, have pressed the county board for explanations about county budgeting and spending. While some on the county board have welcomed their questions, other commissioners have viewed their questions as an intrusion.
In the wake of criticism for posting back-to-back high levies, both the 2016 and 2017 levies were tops in the state, the county board decided to invite some community members to sit in on the budget committee and get their input from them during the four or five months of the budget process.
Because the comments between Storlie and Doo- Kirk were held during a quorum of commissioners and because they concerned county business, there was a question of whether or not the conversation violated the open meeting law.
“They probably did not break the open meeting law,” said Minnesota Newspaper Association Attorney Mark Anfinson, who added, “There is some subtly in the law, and a possible range of violations committed, but due to the ambiguity in the law, I would say they weren’t in violation of the open meeting law. Still, it’s an interesting question.
“Because only two commissioners were involved in the conversation and there wasn’t a quorum (three or more) involved, and they were on their free time, they were within their rights to have this conversation.”
On the matter of redacting the tape, Anfinson said the state law that covers the keeping of official government records, does allow for governmental units to remove or edit tape that doesn’t include official business.
“I doubt what they did would qualify as a violation of that act.”
Nonetheless, said Anfinson, “The conversation caught on tape doesn’t make them (county board) look great and editing the tape doesn’t make them look great either, but neither was a violation of the law.”
Meanwhile the Burgers asked Commissioner Storlie for an apology. Carol Burger called commissioner Storlie and asked for an explanation of her comment and Storlie allegedly responded by saying the Burgers misinterpreted her statement. Twenty minutes later the Burgers received an email from Commissioner Doo- Kirk, asking “one of us to be on the budget committee. We stopped communicating with Heidi well over a year ago… so it was *** odd to hear from her but obviously Ginny got right on the phone to Heidi and the damage control scheme was to invite one of us to participate.”
As far as Storlie’s first explanation to the Burgers, Nick responded by email, “Your lame explanation of what transpired today is totally unacceptable. Heidi asked you if you would approve the Burgers for the citizen advisory committee and you audibly groaned and said not unless I’m desperate.
“You did not realize that the tape was running and continued banter among yourselves for just over twenty minutes. We sent your performance out via social media. We noticed, later in the day, that you had those first twenty minutes deliberately deleted after we voiced our objection to your comments. What has the board come to?
“To delete the twenty minute section of the May 8, 2018 meeting where you totally smeared us is a total cover up and is even worse than leaving it in. What county employee is so corrupt as to delete a public record to save your sorry backside? To think that you believe that you can be reelected after such disrespect is delusional arrogance. Unless we receive a public apology and you restore the now deleted twenty minutes, you can be assured that we will make this a campaign issue. The character of the board will be fully revealed.”
Later that evening after Commissioner Storlie returned from attending the Schroeder Town Board meeting and saw the Burgers’ last email she replied back, “I have returned from my last meeting of the day and now read that I had part of the tape deleted.
“I had no part of any deletion. I would never delete part of any meeting. I apologized to you, Carol, after you pointed out this unintentional comment. Again, my sincere apology for sounding disrespectful with a ‘flip’ answer. It is not professional no matter the situation.”
As for serving on the budget committee, Nick said he would agree to serve if, “They allow my input. I don’t want to serve on the committee if all they want me to be is a rubber stamp.”
As far as the comments caught on camera before the meeting began, Cook County Director of Emergency Management and Public Information officer Valerie Marasco released a statement on Wednesday, May 9, to explain what happened to the footage. Here is part of her response.
“At the May 8 meeting, the live-stream function hosted through the county’s website was turned on 17 minutes prior to 8:30 a.m., when board meetings begin to test the system. YouTube was open so the stream was being captured, but the actual video event was not scheduled to begin recording until 8:30 a.m.
“If someone was following the livestream event, the first 17 minutes prior to the start of the Board Meeting would have been viewable. Both the live-stream event and the recording ended when the meeting was adjourned, and camera was shut off. It takes approximately five to 10 minutes after the event ends to process the live-stream into an archived recorded video, and only includes the video taken between the scheduled start and end times. The 17 minutes prior to the start of the board meeting and the scheduled recording start time, is not retrievable.”
Jeff Cadwell, county administrator added, “It would be similar to having your smart phone in the camera mode and watching whatever is going on in front of the camera; however, the recording doesn’t begin until you actually press the record button. Which explains the difference between footage viewed through the live-stream event and the archived recording available afterward. The County does not edit any video footage of public meetings. We are using and getting used to a new process that was previously provided by a contractor and apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.”
The Burgers responded to that explanation with questions.
“There needs to be some clarification of the facts regarding the now infamous deleted seventeen minutes of video of the May 18, 2018 county board meeting.
“The county’s official response clearly admits there were seventeen minutes captured on video that are not included in the current archive video. The explanation is that the initial seventeen minutes were only viewable during the live stream and were automatically edited out with a default to the scheduled starting time of the meeting.
“The problem we have with that explanation is that we viewed the meeting during the mid-afternoon well after the meeting was adjourned. The seventeen minutes of video did not disappear until after we had contacted Commissioner Storlie via phone to voice our complaints regarding her disrespectful comments. The county’s current explanation does not seem to be consistent with the facts.”
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