As Washington debates the balance between government secrecy and citizens’ right to know, Burlington city councilors argued Monday night over whether to make public their own government secret: a written opinion from the city attorney’s office about the legality of a new no-trespass ordinance.

 

The councilors ultimately voted 8-5 to maintain the secrecy of Assistant City Attorney Gregg Meyer’s 2012 opinion on the constitutionality of the ordinance, which authorizes expulsions from the Church Street Marketplace for unruly behavior. The vote broke along party lines, with the council’s five Progressive-aligned members against six Democrats, one independent and one Republican.

The showdown centered on an amendment offered by Ward 6 Democrat Norm Blais (pictured) that effectively negated a Progressive-backed resolution calling for release of the legal opinion. Blais told the council that the issue at hand actually involved “politicians’ remorse.” He implied that the Progs now regretted having voted for an ordinance that the council approved unanimously in February.

The Progressives’ effort to make the analysis public did stem, they acknowledged, from subsequent objections by some constituents that the ordinance violates constitutional protections. The Progs responded to those expressed concerns by asking John Franco, a former city attorney now in private practice, to analyze the constitutionality of the ordinance. Franco declared in a five-page memo dated June 4 that “this ordinance is neither lawful nor constitutional.”

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Kevin J. Kelley is a contributing writer for Seven Days, Vermont Business Magazine and the daily Nation of Kenya.

9 replies on “Burlington Council Upholds Secrecy of Legal Memo on No-Trespass Ordinance”

  1. We are the frogs in a pot of water slowly being brought to a boil if this is the kind of conduct the Burlington City Council is comfortable with.

  3. Franco’s legal assessment makes no sense. Banning people from the marketplace pending the trial on the charges against them is no different from holding suspected criminals in jail pending their trials. It has long been true that people who are arrested for crimes can be confined to jail, or release on conditions, before they are tried. That has never been considered unconstitutional. There’s absolutely nothing new with the notion that people’s liberties can be infringed pending the trial of their case.

    Blais is right. The Progs on the council got cold feet about what they had done. So, instead of saying, I was wrong and I’d like to vote on this issue again, they ran for cover to “Lawyer to the Progs” Franco to get a predictable legal opinion on what they had already approved???

  4. This debate has been going on since at least the 1990’s, the only difference is back then City Hall realized that banning people from a public square was illegal.
    Certainly a Vermont District Court Judge can impose conditions of release on a person suspected or accused of a crime and some did this in the past, but now The City has decided it wants to usurp the judges’ authority and oversight.
    It would make for an interesting court case, if an appeal was made to a court.

  8. “Burlington Deputy Police Chief Andi Higbee was noncommittal about what action, if any, his department would take in response to reports of prostitution at River Spa.
    “When this type of information comes to us, we evaluate it and forward it to the proper entities, if need be,” Higbee said, though he declined to name those entities.”
    Why not just give those women a letter of trespass? Nice and simple.

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