TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online
Water Board's Secretive Vote Leaves Public High And Dry
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Published: January 17, 2008
The board of Tampa Bay Water, the regional utility serving more than 2.4 million people, is acting as if it has something to hide.
Instead of selecting a general manager to replace the retiring Jerry Maxwell on Jan. 25, as scheduled, members chose one during a Tuesday meeting that was not properly advertised to the public.
Neither the public nor media was in attendance.
This is not how a public agency should operate.
Florida has a strong tradition of open government, which gives residents opportunities to play a role in the decision-making process and read important government documents. It's called "government in the sunshine" for a reason, but the water board's actions kept the public in the dark.
"I've never seen anything like it," Pat Gleason, Gov. Charlie Crist's special counsel for open government, told the St. Petersburg Times. That assessment should embarrass Tampa Bay Water officials.
Board members also should be appalled by the cavalier response of the utility's general counsel's to the lapse.
Richard Lotspeich said the meeting was sufficiently noticed because an ad appeared in the Florida Administrative Weekly. The publication goes to a few law firms and a couple of dozen libraries and is hardly on the general public's reading list. And that notice said only that candidates would be interviewed Jan. 15.
Board members, veteran government officials from the region, should have questioned whether the meeting was properly noticed for the selection vote. After all, the advertisement for the Jan. 25 meeting, which also only appeared in the Florida Administrative Weekly, states the board would "select a general manager" then.
Now, Lotspeich says "select" means the board would ratify the contract with the new general manager. That's insulting doubletalk.
Strangely, neither Tuesday's meeting nor the Jan. 25 session is listed on the utility's Web site, tampabaywater.com, as is custom. The site is a valuable resource for residents, who can learn meeting dates and read meeting agendas and reports.
Perhaps the failure was a result of a clerical error or webmaster oversight. In any event, the public was left out.
Current board Chairwoman Susan Latvala, a Pinellas County commissioner, the entire board and staff need to be more conscientious about the public's right to participate.
Gerald Seeber, a former New Port Richey city manager for 15 years now working as Oviedo's top administrator, appears a safe choice. Seeber is experienced in local water issues. New Port Richey, Pasco County's largest city, is a member of Tampa Bay Water.
But his selection should be rescinded - at least temporarily - and the selection should be continued until Jan. 25 as originally scheduled. The meeting, which will be held at the desalination plant at Apollo Beach, should be widely advertised.
The new Tampa Bay Water executive director cannot expect to win the public's confidence if he begins his tenure in the shadows.
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