South bend council pulls meeting videos …
SOUTH BEND — Some South Bend Common Council members may be learning an Information Age lesson the hard way: Be careful about what you say and do. The world could be watching. Supporters of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community say they were offended by what they saw from council member David Varner during a discussion he had with several other council members before the council’s July 12 afternoon committee meetings. Varner, who opposes a bill that would extend legal protection against job discrimination to gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered individuals, was describing how he had recently accepted an invitation from members of the Michiana GLBT Resource Center to meet at their River Park office and discuss his opposition to the bill. The conversation was captured on video by the council’s automated video recording system and posted on the council’s website, and soon GLBT members were sharing it on Facebook. The Tribune obtained what a reader says is a copy of the video. in it, Varner said he went to the GLBT meeting with a gay friend, and he raised his hands up to make quotation marks in the air as he spoke the word “friend.” He noted that he didn’t want to go alone. And he referred to the GLBT supporters as “those people.” “I think people were just concerned with the attitude that was underlying the way the (GLBT) community was being talked about,” said Catherine Pittman, spokeswoman for South Bend Equality, the group pushing the bill. Varner said Monday that he did not realize he was being recorded. “That conversation wasn’t meant to be, I suppose, politically correct,” he said. “Apparently somebody turned it on … the only thing we planned on taping was the public meetings.” Varner said he did not mean to offend anyone in the GLBT community. “I didn’t see that in any way, shape or form as offensive,” Varner said. “I guess if people decide they’re going to be offended at anything, then they’re going to be offended.” Varner said he couldn’t recall why he used the air quote gesture. His remark about not wanting to attend the GLBT meeting alone had nothing to do with the GLBT supporters, he said. “Personal security was not the issue,” he said. “Whenever you are involved in politics, there needs to be someone else there to witness the event so later it cannot be distorted.” After council vice president Oliver Davis, the bill’s sponsor, received a copy of the video, he sent fellow council members an e-mail. “Please know that we need to be aware that all of our conversations are being recorded in the room where we have our committee meetings and are available online,” Davis wrote. Davis told The Tribune that after he sent that e-mail, the video, along with video of every other council meeting this year, was removed from the council’s website. The day after Davis’ e-mail, council President Derek Dieter, who also opposes the job discrimination bill, sent council members a memo stating that he had asked the city clerk’s office to contact the city’s information technology department to have it remove all meeting videos from the council’s website.
The videos will be returned to the site after the council’s Information and Technology Committee, chaired by Varner, can meet with the vendor who installed the videocast equipment and software, Dieter’s memo stated. At the meeting, the council and vendor will discuss the system’s “overall operations,” Dieter wrote. “It was my understanding that recordings would be of the 6:45 p.m. meeting and the 7 p.m. meeting and all scheduled council committee meetings and would not include any discussions which may take place outside of those advertised meetings,” Dieter wrote. But the next day, Dieter sent council members an e-mail stating that he had erred in the memo and that he had not realized that the 6:45 p.m. meetings were being videocast. “This was wrong and will be corrected,” Dieter wrote. “I don’t believe anyone from the council knew this was being taped. That is an informal time for members to discuss issues if we have time after the agenda is set.” But Davis told The Tribune he thinks even the 6:45 p.m. “informal” meeting should be videocast. “I don’t know where the law stands on ‘informal,’” Davis said. “We might call it ‘informal’ because there is no vote-taking. but I would lean toward, if it’s all nine of us, that it’s open door.” ‘A step backward’? Steve Key, legal counsel for the Hoosier State Press Association, said Indiana’s Open Door law does not require a public body to videocast its meetings on the web, so the council is under no legal obligation to post video coverage of the 6:45 p.m. informal meetings. “But they still are conducting business, and the public still has an interest in the informal meetings,” Key said. “The informal meetings are where it is established what is going to be done at the formal meetings.” Discontinuing videocasting of the 6:45 p.m. informal meetings would “seem to be a step backward in their commitment to being transparent.” When told of Key’s comments, Dieter told The Tribune on Monday that during the council’s afternoon committee meetings, which are not videocast, most of the substantive discussion on agenda items takes place. He said he isn’t sure whether he thinks committee meetings or the “informal” 6:45 p.m. meetings should be videocast. “I don’t want to spend a lot of resources and time of the clerk’s office putting this stuff together if (the public) is basically getting the same information at the public meeting,” Dieter said. “It’s kind of overkill.” If the council decides to videocast only the regular 7 p.m. meetings, interested citizens can always request copies of the minutes from the committee and informal meetings, Dieter said. Varner said he would like to see the video camera turned on only when a public meeting begins, with some kind of visible indicator that the camera is recording. Staff writer Jeff Parrott:jparrott@sbtinfo.com(574) 235-6320 South Bend council pulls meeting videos from web
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