Orange Beach - New Meeting Rules

Mike's Comment - This is putting the right foot forward to regain credibility.

Monday, March 06, 2006
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter

ORANGE BEACH -- Following public corruption indictments against former Mayor Steve Russo, the city's longtime attorney, a former councilman and a local builder, municipal leaders have proposed new ground rules for elected officials meeting with developers.

Among prosecutors' allegations are that the indicted Orange Beach officials used their positions -- through votes or influence -- to curry favor at City Hall for developers who bribed them.

A draft of the policy states that when an elected official meets with a developer or any other person bringing a zoning related matter to the council, the encounters must:

Be held during normal business hours -- 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. -- Monday through Friday.

Occur only at City Hall, the Community Development Department's building, a city office that relates to an issue with the proposal or the project site.

Be attended by at least one other elected official or city staff member.

According to the draft, any deviations from the policy are to be reported during the city's bi-weekly work sessions.

The proposal will be a topic of the council's March 13 work session and could be voted on as soon as its March 21 meeting. City Administrator Jeff Moon said that once the council approves a policy, he would likely bring a similar proposal to the Planning Commission for that panel to consider.

"The reason for the meeting policy, honestly, is there's always been talk about these backroom deals and this and that," said Mayor Pete Blalock, who replaced Russo after the latter's post-indictment resignation.

During the buildup to August 2004's municipal elections, the incumbent administration was painted by opponents as backroom dealmakers who met in secret with development interests, prearranging project approvals. There was not much to those claims, Blalock said in a recent interview, but they created what he described as a stigma.

Since the elections, however, state prosecutors have alleged in the indictments, unsealed Jan. 19, that Russo and City Attorney Larry Sutley, who was granted leave last month, were in cahoots with developer Jim Brown, trading support in City Hall for cash and interest in a lucrative real estate deal. Another 18-count state indictment alleged that Joe McCarron, who served on the council from 1998 to 2004 and also spent time as a member of the Planning Commission, traded votes for promises of future business with his insurance firm.

Russo was also accused by federal prosecutors of hiding $33,000 in campaign funds, then spending it on vacations, clothes and a computer as well as illegally billing the city for about $2,000 worth of personal expenses he rang up on an official trip to New York. Those charges were levied in two federal indictments unsealed the same day as the state's charges, which restated the allegations of campaign finance and municipal billing violations.

All four men have pleaded innocent to all charges.

Meeting with developers to discuss their plans is crucial, city officials have said, but under the proposed guidelines, the current administration would have protection from the type of accusations that swirled two summers ago, Blalock said.

"It's a message to everyone," he said, "that we want to be absolutely aboveboard, without question."

Councilman Jeff Silvers said that taking along a city employee, particularly a planner, also could help prevent issues that may thwart or delay a proposal from going unnoticed in early design stages.

"A second set of ears, a second set of eyes will do everyone good," Silvers said.

Both developers and city officials would be better protected under the meeting policy because there would be a witness to verify claims one way or another, Blalock said. At times the unofficial encounters between developers and elected officials have resulted in confusion when the discussed projects arrive for official review in public meetings, he said.

Blalock recalled a recent instance in which he and Russo, then the mayor, met with developers who wanted to build a high-rise condominium project. What he and Russo saw were two condo towers on the Gulf-front of Perdido Key, Blalock said.

"I told them, 'I like the design of this, looks good.'" Blalock said. "Well, when they came to the Planning Commission, they had these plans of these condos that looked good, that we saw, and then all of a sudden they had another big old tower on the other side of the road that we never knew anything about ... They said, 'Well Pete (Blalock) and Steve (Russo) said it looked good.'"

City Administrator Moon, who also serves on the Planning Commission, said he called Blalock and Russo the day after the board voted against giving the proposal a positive review.

"I talked to (them) the next day and said, 'On the north side? What were you thinking?' and both of them had the exact same comment: 'What are you talking about on the north side?" Moon remembered. "They had no idea; they hadn't been told or shown that."