What are those councilors hiding???

Oh, how the quicksand pulls them in....

I heard the city council met for an hour and a half today in executive session to talk about open meeting lawsuit.

Some of the internal inconsistencies...:

Their lawyer, Mark Sweeney, keeps arguing in court about how precious everyone's time is, the mayor, the bra, the city councilors. But, yet they are spending hours and hours of time, talking about it in meetings and executive sessions. All we are asking for is each of them to talk for approximately an hour or less about what they were doing in these closed sessions.

IF THEY HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE, WHY ARE THEY WORKING SO HARD TO NOT HAVE TO TALK ABOUT IT????????????????

It was amusing to see that the city councilor's lawyer is more concerned with the time of the BRA director and the mayor than the city council's. Imagine hiring a divorce lawyer who is more concerned with your spouses time than yours!

In their motion for summary judgement the council is arguing that they essentially have no power whatsoever. No power over any planning, zoning or development issues in the city. No power over the public health commission. No power over Biolabs.
It is amusing to see councilor Flaherty use as his defense that he has no authority. Maybe that is why he so often is away from City Hall, and he is out making money practicing as an attorney. If you don't have any power, why bother going to work?

To sum up their argument: OK, we may have had a bunch of secret illegal meetings with the BRA over the last couple years, but since we voted away all power over them last December 15, we can now meet with them with impunity because we gave away our authority and we can meet with whomever we want in secret as long as we don't have power or authority over them, and there is no legislation pending.
Also, we don't have any authority over the Boston Public Health Commission even though we do approve their budget every year. Kind of like a parent doesn't really have any control over a teenager, even though they pay all the bills.

Funny that they argue that they have no power over planning or development, because if you do a search on city council hearings and proposed ordinances there are literally dozens of them? If they don't have anything to do with them, why are they wasting their time on hearings?????

Oh, ye of such less big faith.

It is also distressing to see the DA and AG hanging on the sidelines. What is so apparent about all of this, is that politicians don't care about right or wrong, just what is politically expedient at the time. And the press? You'd think they would care about access to the meetings where things are decided.

Well, back in court on Jan. 4th....