Goodyear selects new council member with little public input

By Madeline Ackley Salazar
Twitter: @Mkayackley

For the past few weeks, Goodyear City Council has worked to fill a vacancy on the seven-member body, but for many residents, there has been little information about the process.

The council chose to decide who will represent Goodyear in a series of closed-door meetings, away from public inquiry. 

Their final decision was made Tuesday afternoon when Goodyear’s mayor and five council members sat down in a conference room at city hall.

For the next four hours, the council interviewed the five men on its shortlist to fill the vacancy, triggered when then-council member Joe Pizzillo assumed the role as mayor after the death of Georgia Lord last December. 

When council members finished deliberating, the conference room doors were opened, and candidates and reporters filed in to hear the council’s vote. 

Immediately, and without further discussion, a motion was made to appoint longtime city commissioner Patrick Bray to the council, a decision which was swift and unanimous. 

It looked as though the choice was made before the doors had  opened, a fact that Pizzillo confirmed afterward in an interview with the Independent. 

But this is where Goodyear not only lacked transparency with the public, but may have run afoul with Arizona’s laws governing how public bodies are to meet, known as open meeting law.

Arizona’s open meeting law states decisions made by public bodies are to be open to the public. It’s the law that mandates agendas be posted publicly and that minutes be kept for posterity.

The law favors disclosure, with the exception of employment and salary issues. Those items can be discussed behind closed doors in what is called executive session, which is what the council was doing on Tuesday. 

But the law states a final decision must be made in a public meeting, and forbids voting or taking a “straw poll” while in executive session — what the council, by its own admission, appears to have done. 

Dan Barr is an Arizona attorney specializing in constitutional law and First Amendment issues, who said what the city did is not allowed. 

 “Oh boy,” he wrote in an email to The Independent. “That is a clear violation of the (open meeting law)."

Barr also points to something else he says doesn’t sit right; the fact  the entire council interviewed candidates behind closed doors, which he says the law does not allow for. 

“It’s one thing for them to meet in executive session to discuss…who they're considering, and what their various qualifications are,” Barr said.

“But to interview an outside person in the executive session strikes me as an improper use of the executive session,” Barr said, pointing to the first paragraph of the statute, which explains the proper use of executive session.

The city maintains it did not violate the law by interviewing candidates in executive session, pointing to the same statute Barr mentioned.

City spokesperson Tammy Vo did not provide an explanation as to why the council had taken a poll while in executive session.

“I can’t speak to what took place in executive session because I am not legally privy to that information per the statute,” Vo said in an email to the Independent. 

'If it's not broke, don't fix it'

Ordinarily, the process taken to become a city council member is one of disclosure. 

Council candidates must register with the city, and their names and campaign finance reports are posted on the city’s website, so voters can make informed decisions. 

But when there’s a vacancy in the middle of a term, the city of Goodyear has been allowed to select the candidate of its choice, leaving the public in the dark until a final decision has been made.

Goodyear City Council. Mayor Joe Pizzillo (left), Vice Mayor Brannon Hampton and councilmembers Sheri Lauritano, Wally Campbell, Laura Kaino and Bill Stipp. [City of Goodyear]

The names, resumes and applications of the 23 Goodyear residents who applied for the council seat were not made public, nor were the names of the five candidates the council had narrowed its focus on. 

This came as an apparent surprise to Pizzillo, who initially reacted in disbelief when he was told the names had not been made public except through records requests. 

“Weren’t the five candidates on the website?” Pizzillo asked City Clerk Darcie McCracken following the council meeting on Tuesday.

“They weren’t posted,” she said. “But we did respond to public records requests.”

“Typically we haven’t posted them,” McCracken continued. 

“From a privacy standpoint?” Pizzillo suggested. 

“Yeah…but if anyone asked we absolutely gave them that information. I mean, it wasn’t a secret by any stretch,” McCracken said.

“We are always looking for process improvements,” she told Independent Newsmedia. 

Vo chimed in that the city attorney would best be able to answer questions about the city’s process. 

Vo was later asked several times over email why the city’s process has been to select replacement council members behind closed doors. 

Vo declined to answer that question and instead stated, “As allowed by law, our city council deliberated in executive session on who to bring in to interview. Also as provided for under the law, council interviewed and deliberated in executive session. Following that, the appointment of the new council member was conducted by the public body in public session.”

What is known is Goodyear has been appointing replacement council members this way for several years. 

The same process was taken in 2018 when the council selected Laura Kaino to take over for Joanne Osborne. Kaino was later elected in 2019 when she ran unopposed.

Goodyear also has the power to change the process if it desires. 

On Jan. 10, the council met publicly to discuss how it would go about selecting its newest member. 

“The last time we did this in 2018, we did not have a subcommittee” review candidate applications, McCracken said at the January meeting. “There was no citizen ad hoc committee or anything like that,” she said. 

Several council members remarked that the process had worked just fine in the past, before voting unanimously in favor. 

“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” Pizzillo said. 

Madeline Ackley Salazar can be reached at mackley@iniusa.org or found on Twitter @Mkayackley.