Airport Committee told to destroy potential public records, avoid private conversations, and avoid unplanned motions

Members of the Renton Airport Advisory Committee (RAAC) and Airport leadership discuss the future plans for Renton’s airport at last Tuesday’s quarterly RAAC meeting. Some participants were on Zoom, visible on the right side of the meeting screen.

[Note:  There was also some valuable information shared at the Tuesday meeting, including a thorough report from the South Renton neighborhood representative. I’ll cover this content in a separate article. ]

At the Tuesday meeting of the Renton Airport Advisory Committee, I was surprised and disappointed by the controlling, questionable guidance given by airport management to the Committee’s hard-working volunteer members.

My process objections, in order of occurrence:

(1) Meeting minutes seem censored, and committee members are told they can’t make unplanned motions:

A member asked why some proposed motions from the previous meeting were not included in the minutes.  Public Works Director Martin Pastucha said that the motions should not have been made, since they were not on the agenda, so they were not included in the minutes –not even as unseconded or out-of-order motions.  Observers like me are left wondering whether the motions might have involved jets, or flight schools, or some other critical topic. [After posting this, I was told by a RAAC member that the rejected motion was in fact about the flight school; the school likely could have been saved by RAAC and City Council intervention at that time.]

Mr. Pastucha then explained (incorrectly) that “Robert’s Rules” prevented members from making motions that are not on the agenda. But there are many valid reasons under the Committee’s bylaws for members to make motions that are not specifically on the agenda, such as to modify the agenda, request information, raise a point of order, or set future agendas.   Robert’s Rules are there to ensure everyone gets to participate, and motions play a key role; By asking members to only make motions that are on the agenda (an agenda which Mr. Pastucha and airport management created) he was undermining both Robert’s Rules and Renton’s overall purpose for the committee.  Yes, the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA) requires key “actions” to be publicly scheduled in advance, but it does not require that every motion by a RAAC member be placed on the agenda first.  It’s a more significant violation of OPMA to secretly script and choreograph a committee meeting in advance than it is to let the full body of committee members run the meeting on its natural course in a public setting.

And, as a final point, Mr. Pastucha repeatedly reiterates that this committee is only advisory to City Council and has no authority to act on its own. If so, it appears the committee can explore any topic of interest to them at any time without violating OPMA per a 2015 Supreme Court decision, and all motions should be acceptable at any time (including the ones he rejected).

(2) Members told they can not communicate outside of the meetings

A member of the committee asked if it was possible to get a contact list of the other committee members.  Airport Management vetoed the request citing member privacy concerns.  When another member suggested that the list could be voluntary,  Mr. Pastucha said it was a bad idea because individual members of the committee should not talk one-on-one outside of the meeting.  He suggested that even with individual conversations, they might accidentally have a “serial meeting” that would violate the Open Public Meeting Act.   But there are about 30 members of this committee, and it would take a quorum of them (about 15 or more) communicating about committee business outside of an announced meeting to violate the act–if it even applies.  Short of that, RAAC members have a constitutional right to speak to anyone in our community including other RAAC members if that they choose to, and it is wrong for government employees to try to chill this communication.  Committee members should simply be trained in reasonable protocol to avoid OPMA violations, which the bylaws already call for.

(3) Members told to destroy their notes!

Some members pointed out that with the infrequent RAAC meeting schedule (now quarterly, previously monthly), the RAAC secretary was waiting months to publish draft meeting minutes.  This often required members, who need to timely report to neighborhoods and businesses, to prepare their own preliminary reports on each meeting to share with the people they represent.  So the members asked if the draft meeting minutes could be prepared and circulated within a week after each RAAC meeting.

Airport Management rejected the request, and instead sent an email to every RAAC member after the meeting that included this dangerous, felony-inducing statement:

“Board members – and staff – need to throw away notes taken at the meeting once the minutes are complete. Any written record – even if it is just a scribble note – is subject to public record.”

Notes taken by committee members for their personal use can be valuable, and they may or may not be public records; but, if in doubt, the right course of action is opposite the Airport Manager’s direction: do NOT throw them away.  A public record does not cease being a public record by being disposed of….it becomes an illegally destroyed public record.    This mistaken instruction puts committee members at risk of breaking the law AND raises serious questions about what other documents might have been discarded by airport management so that they didn’t become “subject to public record.”  This article by the Municipal Research Center gives good information on when personal notes become public records.

The email implied that the instruction to destroy notes came from Renton’s City Clerk. I’ve always known Renton’s Clerk to be a careful preservationist of public records, so I’m skeptical that the Clerk intended this message to go out this way. (Perhaps the Clerk’s guidance, if it truly came from the Clerk, was just intended for a secretary transcribing notes, not the full committee.)  I’ve reached out to Renton’s Clerk via email and phone to get further information, and I’m currently awaiting a response.  [February 18 Update:  The City Clerk has verified these instructions did not come from him.  I have added his email as a comment to this blog entry.]

While each of these issues by themself might be a simple mistakes, taken together they form a picture of  a deliberate effort to manipulate and constrain a committee that has previously been key in ensuring the airport is transparent in its operations, and that the interests of neighborhoods and airport businesses are at the forefront of  sustainable airport planning.  110,000 residents of Renton deserve to know the committee is doing this work as they did in past decades without censorship, fear of communication, or pressure to destroy their notes.  A quick google search reveals Mr. Pastucha’s tenure in Santa Monica in the same role was full of controversy over similar issues, as covered in newspaper articles like this and this. Santa Monica has still not recovered and their airport’s future has become a difficult, divisive political matter for their council and community.

Neighborhood leaders and aviation professionals volunteer their time to help create a sustainable Renton airport that will be a positive asset for the Renton community into the future.