Mayor keeps study quiet

A consultant’s efficiency study of Spokane city government has been given to City Council members under promises of secrecy, and Mayor Dennis Hession refused again Tuesday to make the report public.

Next week is the earliest that copies of the $260,000 study paid for by taxpayers will be released, a city spokeswoman said.

The report was given to City Council members Friday after they promised the mayor to keep its contents confidential.

The 450-page report by Matrix Consulting Group examines “efficiency and effectiveness” in Spokane’s city government and makes recommendations for cutbacks in light of expected revenue shortfalls and budget issues.

The fact that the report was distributed from the executive branch of city government to the legislative branch was disclosed at Tuesday’s meeting of the three-member Public Safety Committee.

There, committee chairman Joe Shogan asked Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick if she had read the report.

The police chief, who used the committee meeting to detail her recent reorganization of the police department, said she had read it, but there was no further discussion.

The mayor previously has said all city department heads have been given copies of the report.

On Jan. 3, Hession and assistant city attorney Pat Dalton said the public won’t see a copy until City Hall makes corrections that officials say are needed.

The Spokesman-Review formally requested a copy of the consultant’s report on Jan. 3.

The same day, Assistant City Attorney Pat Dalton turned down the newspaper’s request to make the report public. “The city is respectfully declining to provide you a copy of the draft report because it is a preliminary draft at this time,” Dalton said in his written response to the newspaper.

Gary Graham, managing editor of The Spokesman-Review, said he is disturbed that the report is not being released to the public.

“Most of us learned in our first civics class that the public’s business should be done in public, not in secrecy. The curtain of control that continues to surround this study is absurd. City Hall’s conduct regarding the withholding of documents, no matter which version or draft, can only cause citizens and the media to ask, ‘What are they hiding?’ “

After Tuesday’s Public Safety Committee meeting, Shogan, who serves as the City Council president, confirmed that he had received a copy and had begun reading it. He declined to release a copy.

Council members Bob Apple and Mary Verner, also members of the safety committee, said they too had copies but couldn’t discuss the report because of their confidentiality agreements with the mayor’s office.

“This isn’t my idea of how government should work,” Councilman Al French said when contacted before Tuesday’s weekly council meeting.

On Jan. 5, French scolded Hession for keeping the report from the public.

“If the report has flaws in it, acknowledge it has flaws and let the public see it,” French said on that date.

Asked Tuesday if he would release a copy of the report, French said he couldn’t because he had given his word to the mayor to keep its contents secret. He agreed to the verbal secrecy pledge, but wasn’t required to put anything in writing, French said.

“The only way I was going to get a copy is if I made a commitment to confidentiality,” said French.

“This is how this administration chooses to disseminate information, and we have to live with it,” he said.

French said he agreed to the confidentiality pledge because reading the report and digesting its findings is important to him and other council members who “have to continue working with this administration.”

The City Council, which likely will take action based on the report’s findings, “needs to be enlightened about what’s going to be requested of us,” French said.

French said he requested the original “draft report” from the consultant, but he and other council members were given a second-generation document that had some revisions.

The report contains “some faulty assumptions,” French said, without elaborating.

“There are some interesting observations, interesting elements that are factually inaccurate,” he said.

“But I still believe the public has a right to see the original document, this second-generation draft and the final document,” French said.

Former City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers, reached at home for comment, agreed with French. “Any document that goes to the City Council outside of executive session is a public document. What are they trying to hide?” Rodgers asked.

At the mayor’s request, the City Council last August approved hiring the outside consulting firm to come up with “best practices” recommendations for streamlined government.

“The Matrix study is not finished,” Hession said when reached for comment late Tuesday.

“Between now and this coming Monday or Tuesday, the report will have numerous factual and presentation (spelling, grammar) errors corrected, and more significantly, will have added to it an executive summary and several data-rich appendices, all of which will make the document more understandable and helpful to the reader,” the mayor said.

The mayor said the copy provided to the City Council was a “rough draft which does not have the benefit of the aforementioned improvements.

“We want to provide you and the public with accurate information,” Hession said.

City spokeswoman Marlene Feist earlier said the mayor’s office is taking the position that the consultant’s report is still in “draft form” and therefore the public is not entitled to see it.

“The council received actually a ‘working draft’ of that document,” Feist said. “The document remains a draft at this point.’

“We are working to correct some factual inaccuracies that are in the report,” Feist said, without elaborating.