New council struggles with AG report

Surprise City Council is expected to vote Thursday whether to accept the findings of the Attorney General's Office that the former council repeatedly violated the state's Open Meeting Law.

In the meantime, present and former City Council members continue to struggle with the report.

Councilman Joe Johnson and former Councilmen Danny Arismendez and Gary "Doc" Sullivan all are named in the report as violators. All three, however, dispute the findings and say they are willing to fight it, even if it means going to court.

The investigation stemmed from allegations made by then-City Manager Jim Rumpeltes in June 2007 that the council routinely met outside public view. The night of Rumpeltes' speech, the report states, Johnson, Sullivan and Arismendez met for dinner to discuss the city manager's job, then shared that information with the former Mayor Joan Shafer, who recently died.

This dinner never happened, Johnson and Arismendez said. They also denied being polled by Shafer on upcoming council agenda items, another violation outlined in the attorney general report.

The current City Council is having a difficult time dealing with the fact they will be punished for past City Council mistakes. The current council, with the exception of Johnson, is all new and had no part in the attorney general's report, which looked at meeting violations between 2006 and 2007.

Based on its findings, the attorney general is calling for additional training for the City Council on the meeting law as well as the hiring of a compliance officer for a year to oversee meetings.

Mayor Lyn Truitt, meanwhile, has made an effort to show the attorney general that today's City Council is a different body. He had the city attorney draft a bullet-point list of all the meeting-law training the present council has had.

"I just wanted to make sure the AG was aware of that," Truitt said. "Then, if they saw that in a positive light, potentially working with us on the compliance side of it."

The council has received four memos concerning the law, taken part in a council workshop on the law, approved a new ethics policy and taken part in League of Arizona Cities and Towns elected-officials training.

Whether additional training is ultimately required, Truitt said he is not looking for an "adversarial" relationship with the attorney general.

"What we're looking to do is put this whole issue behind us," he said.

Attorney general spokeswoman Andrea Esquer has declined to comment on the issue until Surprise votes on the report.

Surprise City Council meets earlier this year.