Anoka Citizens Call For City Council To Investigate Possible Open Meeting Law Infraction At Voting Forum

Controversy surrounding a recent League of Women Voters Candidate Forum led several community members to ask for an investigation at Monday night’s Anoka City Council meeting (Sept. 19).

The League of Women Voter’s candidate forum was held on Sept. 15 and was publicized as a closed taping. This has been a change since the COVID-19 pandemic, as in years past they have been open to the public. LWV decided to keep them closed, “keeping in mind the unpredictability of Covid and the explosive nature of local public meetings in past months” they said in an emailed statement.

Despite this, the taping was attended by several Anoka commission members and several spouses of board and candidate members, leading to accusations of hidden communications and open meeting law violations.

“I would have emailed the mayor and council members with my concerns,” Anoka resident Jeff Nelson said during the meeting’s open forum. “However, since most of you have not returned my emails in the past I’m here in person to put the behavior of some city commission members on record. The citizens of Anoka simply want answers.”

Nelson then stated, while keeping names anonymous, that “two spouses and at least for commission members” were present at the taping. Nelson was especially concerned about the commission members, as their positions are appointed by council members and voters can not express their disapproval in the upcoming election. The League of Women Voters responded to the situation in an emailed statement.

“We informed people at the door of the protocol for the evening, and that if they came in, they would be breaking promises made to candidates in the forum invitation,” Jody Anderson wrote on behalf of LWV. “The spokesperson stated that this was a public meeting since it was using public space, that they had talked with the city manager (Greg Lee), and that there would be consequences if they weren’t allowed to come in. They pushed in.”

Later in the City Council meeting, City Manager Greg Lee spoke to his role in the unexpected attendee’s entrance into the forum, stating that public concern over the closed forum led himself and City Attorney Scott Baumgartner to search city policies to confirm the legal nature of the closed taping. Their results were inconclusive, but Lee assumed that the council members would be displeased with barring the public, thus affecting their relationship with LWV.

“The day of the meeting I was contacted by a few council members, a total of three, who had concerns who were contacted by citizens saying they were being excluded and expressed their displeasure with that,” Manager Lee said. “I pulled out the city’s policies and contacted the city attorney to see what we could do about it. We thought the best thing we could do was to communicate with LWV… and that there may be consequences in that the council may not allow you to use this venue in the future.”

Anoka City Council candidate Jeff Lee was invited to the forum as a candidate, but also identified his wife as one of the spouses who attended the taping. He saw the controversy online and came to the meeting to address the comments made about him.

“That’s the first time I’ve participated in a LWV forum, and so how they are conducted is not something that I have ever been a part of before,” Lee said. “My wife wanted to come with me to be supportive, and I said, ‘I don’t know if you’ll get in.’ We were let right in. There was no bullying, no pushing anything through.”

Lee also alleged that the moderator of the forum was a donor to his opponent, which he says he learned two hours before the forum and would have impacted his willingness to participate had he known prior. Council Member Erik Skogquist identified the moderator as Sandy Connor, who is not a donor nor is she from Anoka. He stated it is LWV policy to invite moderators who are out of the bounds of the elections they are covering. He agreed with several community members that the issue should be placed on the agenda of a future meeting and investigated.

“I am in favor of bringing this to a work session as soon as possible,” Skogqusit said. “There are a lot of people that are pretty upset with this, myself personally. The part that frustrated me, and this is where the suggestion of having somebody look into this outside of the city of Anoka is important, because we’re getting conflicting stories.”

Former Anoka mayor Bjorn Skogquist, brother to Erik, was also in attendance at the meeting and spoke in the open forum. His concern was that the city’s open meeting laws had been violated, as a message given to only specific council members through a single person could lead to a violation.

“All that I want to say is that members of this council, the city manager, attorney and others, should know you could break the open meeting law in two ways,” Bjorn Skogquist said. “One, you can get together and have a meeting without publishing it. The other is that you can play telephone. You can all make telephone calls to a point of contact and if action takes place, that may be breaking the law. You should not be making actions without the public having the chance to react.”

Rice assured that he knows the open meeting laws and expressly asks council members about their prior correspondence with fellow council members to be sure a game of “telephone” is not taking place. He stated that he is not aware of any violations. Bjorn Skogquist stated that Lee’s earlier statement about being contacted by three City Council members made him bring up the open meeting law.

“I would like this sooner than later in a work session so we can discuss this and possibly have somebody look at this outside the city of Anoka,” Erik Skogquist said. “I’m concerned because I’ve had people in other forums that are hosted by the league with concerns, this has opened up a whole thing for people. We need to look at this and understand how we can not have this in the future.”

Council Member Elizabeth Barnett agreed, stating that in addition to an investigation, she would like to pursue other methods of public forum. She cited LWV’s support of Planned Parenthood as a partisan obstacle and due to that reason was opposed to the forum in the first place. She would like to use a work session to get past some of the partisan language and hyperbole to get a clear picture of the night of the forum.

“I agree this does need to be a work session meeting and soon,” Barnett said. “The phrases I’m reading over and over are ‘bully and pushing in,’ and ‘consequences and insurrection’ and I believe these are pumped up versions to intimidate the public and get attention in a political time period. I would like more information about what happened that night.”

The Anoka City Council will hold a discussion concerning the candidate forum at 5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 26 during its work session. Both candidate forums filmed on Sept. 15 are available for viewing on the LWV website at my.lwv.org/minnesota/anoka-blaine-coon-rapids-area.

Council will consider THC ordinance

Elsewhere in Monday’s meeting, the Anoka City Council tabled a draft ordinance for THC licensure for an October work meeting. City Attorney Scott Baumgartner modeled the THC ordinance closely after the city’s tobacco ordinance, meaning the same kinds of businesses will be eligible for a license to sell THC. The council did not feel ready to approve given debates over how restrictive to make the ordinance.

“I drafted it as more restrictive than necessary as it’s always easier to loosen rather than tighten the language,” Baumgartner said.

SOURCE: Hometown Source