Behind closed doors

Make meetings open again … We're broke again … And snitches get stitches.

Last week, we told you about Flagstaff’s failure to follow the Arizona open meetings law — and how that failure to follow the law cost the city its lawsuit attempting to keep a company from opening a helium mine right next to a protected water source.

In case you missed it, the short version is, the Flagstaff City Council voted to file a lawsuit against the would-be helium miners, but they took that vote in private, behind closed doors.

Arizona’s open meeting law requires decisions by local officials to be made in public. Councils can confer with their attorneys in executive sessions under certain conditions, but their final votes must be taken in open meetings.

The city did try to address the mistake three years later, publicly voting to take legal action to stop the Vancouver-based Desert Mountain Energy Corporation from mining on the Red Gap Ranch.

But by then it was too late. The council had already broken the open meetings law, and the lawsuit was thrown out on those grounds last month.

After the city lost its appeal, Flagstaff Mayor Becky Daggett told us that all cities will now face an “extra burden” of following the open meeting law.

So the City of Flagstaff is teaming up with the powerful League of Arizona Cities and Towns in the upcoming legislative session to get lawmakers to “protect executive session confidentiality” and make it easier for local politicians to make decisions in secret, away from the prying eyes of the public.

But one lawmaker says heck no to that idea.

In fact, Republican Rep. Jeff Weninger wants to make it harder for local politicians to conduct public business in private, he told us after reading last Wednesday’s edition.

“I’ve already been upset with a lot of cities and different organizations about how non-transparent they are as of now. And it’s not just executive session — it goes into other things,” he said.

It’s not just Flagstaff city council members — or even just city councils — that are retreating to secrecy to make major decisions that should be made in the open, he noted.

Two weeks ago, the State Board for Charter Schools went into executive session to discuss revoking the charter of Primavera, a scandal-plagued online charter school headquartered in Weninger’s district. The board never debated the motion in public.

“They vote on it and adjourn. No public comment or nothing, they go forward with trying to shut the school down,” he said. ”Now, no matter what everybody thinks of (closing Primavera), to me that is just not adequate transparency.”

Not to mention, the whole meeting was held on Zoom, which annoys him.

“Right before they’re ready to vote, you can hear me tell someone, ‘No, I want it unsweetened,’ because I just signed back on and someone asked me what kind of a tea I want,” he said.

And there are other transparency problems in local government, he noted, including at the Tolleson Unified School District, which recently demanded $28,000 for public records that Republican Rep. Matt Gress requested as part of a legislative audit.

Weninger was a member of the Chandler City Council before becoming a lawmaker,¹ and he said that there’s always been some amount of skirting the public meeting laws, but “it just doesn’t seem like people are hiding it anymore.”

And Flagstaff is one of the rare city councils to break the law and actually face consequences — but only because a court threw out its lawsuit over the secrecy fumble.

The Attorney General’s Office doesn’t take Open Meeting Law complaints seriously — this summer, the office closed nearly 100 open meeting law complaints without even investigating them.

And that creates a system where secrecy becomes normalized because there’s no real risk in breaking the rules.

Weninger is hoping to change that.

Right now, he’s still in the fact-finding phase of drafting legislation.

Unable to resist the opportunity, we suggested Weninger look into Oregon’s executive session law, which allows reporters to attend closed-door executive session meetings, though they can’t record them or report on information they learned in the meeting unless it is disclosed outside of the meeting.²

We also suggested he look into the laws around public non-disclosure agreements — à la Pima County’s Project Blue — since NDAs are innately connected with public meeting and executive session laws.

Right now, he’s specifically focused on ensuring:

• Anything discussed in executive session must be on the action agenda, not buried in a consent agenda.

• Government bodies have tighter limits on what can be discussed in executive session.

• And potentially ensuring a neutral third party (like a clerk or watchdog role) is inside executive sessions to stop or report abuses.

He’s also worried about issues like “serial communication,” where members of a public body will essentially play a game of telephone to make sure everyone is on the same page before a meeting. That’s also a violation of the open meetings law, but it happens all the time, he said.

Of course, Weninger can already hear the press and opponents complaining about the hypocrisy of forcing local governments to be more transparent, considering the state Legislature’s lack of transparency.

Open meetings laws don’t apply to the Legislature, and in recent years, they’ve voted to allow secret, “closed caucus” meetings. Lawmakers also altered their public records retention schedule to destroy all communications after three months.³

Weninger said he’s not trying to do away with executive sessions or political secrecy altogether — they serve a real purpose. But he wants to ensure those tools are being used correctly, rather than just out of convenience for the politicians.

“There are legitimate legal things to discuss in executive session, but I think we need to be really careful that that’s what they’re discussing, and they’re not essentially having meetings outside of public view,” he said. “But of course, that’s tough to get at because they’re private meetings.”

Siri, how do we shut down a shutdown?: The government shutdown has reached its third week, with Republicans and Democrats still divided on how to reach a compromise to reopen the federal government. Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly now says a vote on extending healthcare subsidies alone will not be enough to reopen the government, per Politico. Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has postponed the return of the House yet again, per the Associated Press. Johnson has faced ongoing scrutiny from Democrats over the delay in swearing in Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva.

“People are upset. I’m upset. I’m a very patient man, but I am angry right now,” Johnson said. “It’s on the Senate. They’re the ones playing games. All the questions need to be for them.”

Help us avoid a shutdown by upgrading your subscription.

Cutbacks ahead: State lawmakers received some bad news at last week’s Finance Advisory Committee, where the Joint Legislative Budget Committee told them that the state could have just $67 million on hand by July 2027. That’s not even enough to cover the new state costs under Trump’s “big beautiful budget” (though the state could see a $700 million windfall from the federal budget provision allowing states to request border security repayment funds). That means lawmakers will have to cut back their spending significantly when crafting the budget next year, including by trimming “one-time” spending that lawmakers have treated as ongoing.

Teaching a thing or two: With Arizona continuing to struggle to find educators in the midst of a state-wide teacher shortage, the Arizona Department of Education is launching a pilot program for people with high school diplomas to start working in classrooms, Samantha Rea writes for SanTan Sun News. The new program — dubbed the Arizona Teacher Registered Apprenticeship Program — will give future educators hands-on classroom work under the supervision of an experienced educator. Participants will work under their mentor for one to four years while making progress toward an Arizona teaching certificate or bachelor’s degree. Meanwhile, lawmakers have ordered a special audit of Tolleson Union School District following multiple financial decisions, which have brought into question the district’s leadership, Jakob Thorington writes for Arizona Capitol Times. The financial decisions under scrutiny include a $25 million contract with Isaac Elementary School District, which aimed to help Isaac recover from a budget deficit earlier this year.

“There’s a disservice being done and I feel for the community. I feel for the staff, parents and the kids,” House Majority Leader Michael Carbone said.

Rain, rain go away: Just weeks after the city of Globe faced catastrophic floods, storms over the weekend brought another round of excessive flooding, AZFamily’s Lauren Kobley, Alexis Dominguez and Brian Petersheim Jr. report. The latest flood left overflowing bridges and worsened structural concerns in the Globe and Miami areas. Globe Mayor Al Gameros said residents and businesses were more prepared for this round of rainfall, with many sandbagging their properties.

Bear down on a plan: The University of Arizona held a faculty subcommittee meeting on Friday to decide on the next steps after the Trump administration’s higher education “compact,” Hannah Cree writes for AZPM. The meeting, which around 160 people attended virtually, concluded with the Committee of Eleven deciding to draft a new compact with faculty leaders of the other eight universities who received the message from the Trump administration. On the same day, MIT President Sally Kornbluth said the school “cannot support” the original compact, which she said would tie federal funds to political priorities, per the AP. UA will have until the end of November to make an official decision.

In other, other news

Two Scottsdale schools could be repurposed — aka closed — because of ongoing, dwindling school-age populations (Tom Scalon / Scottsdale Progress) … Santa Cruz County is crafting a first-of-its-kind Community Wildfire Protection Plan after being awarded a nearly $180,000 grant (Daisy Zavala Magaña / Nogales International) … The U.S. Department of Labor has publicly acknowledged the potential for higher food prices as crackdowns on illegal immigration persist (Howie Fischer / Capitol Media Services) … The new Walupe Health Center will provide accessible healthcare to the Pascua Yaqui Tribe (Nicole LaHendro / KJZZ) … And Former President Joe Biden has started radiation for an aggressive form of prostate cancer (USA TODAY).

College Republicans United at ASU, last seen urging students to call the feds on classmates who they suspect are undocumented, is hosting a “Report your local ANTIFA to the Feds” event on Thursday.

Similar to this weekend’s Sasquatch Hunt in Kingman, this event will feature true believers and some who say they have witnessed Antifa firsthand.

1. Weninger is running for Chandler mayor in 2026.

2. That Oregon law, however, makes us a little nervous since it sounds very tempting for reporters to break. But Oregon reporter extraordinaire Julia Shumway tells us she’s never heard of a reporter getting in trouble for breaking it, FWIW.

3. The records destruction policy came after the state Senate’s “audit” of the 2020 presidential election, when reporters became keenly interested in who lawmakers were talking to about the sham endeavor.