Rexburg City Council- what about the spirit of the law too?

Today's paper was no surprise to me. I knew that somehow the City's attorney would get the Council out of this jam. The prosecutor found that the City did not violate any open meeting laws, "technically," but did, in here opinion, fail to follow the "spirit of the law." This is exactly how this City is run. They push everything to the point that it borders on illegal and then back off just enough to to avoid prosecution. Is this how the City should be run?

In the article, the new Mayor, Woodland, even lost some credibility with me. He still denies that anything wrong occurred. He also denies that the City needs more education on open meeting laws, which is what the prosecutor recommended. Instead, he says that the Council should only get education on public perception and such. In other words, he wants to be educated on ways that the Council can manipulate the public and "get away" with crap. What happened to just being honest and working within the system. That is why elected you people to represent us. How can we know if you are representing us if you are holding back door meetings with each other and making deals and agreements with out being accountable.

The paper listed that one of those involved in the questionable meetings was Adam Stout. Now, I have sort of given him the benefit of the doubt in the past, but in this case, I have to come down on him a bit. During the selection process for the new mayor. Adam's Facebook account had posts from him soliciting votes from his friends to vote for him in an online poll on who should be our next mayor. He was really begging his friends right up until the almost the day of the Council meeting that decided the next mayor. It is funny that he suddenly pulled his name from being considered as mayor and then was the first to nominate Rich Woodland as mayor. Why the sudden change of heart. I think it is because he had been lobbied by other Council members. I won't say who I think approached him, but you could probably guess who I would pick.

Also, if you had attended that night's meeting, you could feel the awkwardness. The Council, I think, was trying there best to disguise from the those in attendance the fact that they had already decided who the next mayor would be. In fact, Chris Mann asked if Rich could be sworn in that night and if he had brought his wife, as they had talked about earlier. What!!! Mann actually right there admitted that they had already figured out who was going to be mayor and actually talked to the person beforehand about it. What part of that didn't technically violate the "letter" of the law. What a slap in the face to all those candidates who had applied to be appointed mayor and had honestly thought this would be a legitimate process.

Okay, so now we are past the open meeting law violation and the newspaper's following up on the Mayor Larsen scandal. Personally, I feel that both issues were not explored fully. What next? I think all this has done is empowered the Council and Zollinger. They will continue to push the limits of the law and disregard honest to goodness openness. People like Rex, who already think they are above the law, will now have new found confidence in this view. What a shame. I guess you just have to know that sooner or later the "stuff" will really hit the fan, like it did for good ole Shawn Larsen who gave up his aspiring political career to work for a mult-level marketing scheme in Utah (you know, Amway by another name). Yeah right!!! He ran away because he was so afraid of what was going to come out if he didn't. His biggest fear has always been bad press.

I think I'm going to need some input on what good things are happening in Rexburg. I know there is tons of it, I am just focusing in on the political junk right now, my apologies.