Controversy passed from the Glasgow Electric Plant Board to the Glasgow Common Council on Monday evening with Daily Times reporter Melinda Overstreet requested a copy of the proposed city budget.
The budget received it first reading on Monday, and a summary was prepared for public inspection, but the council declined Overstreet's request. Officials advised that the budget would be disclosed after its second reading at which point it will or will not have been adopted.
Armed with supporting legal authority —presumably a 2010 open records decision recognizing the public's right to a copy of a proposed budget when it is submitted to the council by the mayor and overruling past decisions characterizing it as a preliminary record until acted upon — Overstreet disputed the city's position.
City officials expressed doubt, indicating that they would check with the League of Cities. The League — whose expansive knowledge of municipal law is unquestioned — is not assigned a statutory role in adjudicating open records disputes.
Unless the statutes have been substantially revised since 2010, the attorney general's open records decision represents governing precedent for his office on this issue.
And the attorney general is, of course, statutorily assigned the duty to adjudicate open records disputes.
In the 2010 decision, which pitted the City of Midway against the Midway Messenger, the attorney general modified earlier decisions in which the terms "preliminary" and "proposed" were treated as one and the same.
He concluded that the proposed budget must be accessible to the public when the mayor submits it to the council and not after it is approved or disapproved. We trust the League of Cities confirmed The Daily Times's position and released a copy of the budget to Overstreet.
The League's website, updated in February 2019, identifies the 2010 decision as the governing legal authority.
https://www.klc.org/news/479/How_and_when_should_a_city_budget_be_adopt…
Those still in doubt can review the open records decision itself at:
