TOWN COUNCIL OUTREACH COMMITTEE’S NEW PROCEDURES FOR BOARD APPOINTMENTS TO INCLUDE PUBLIC CANDIDATE INTERVIEWS

The Town Council’s Outreach Communications and Appointments Committee l (OCA) has finalized new procedures for appointments to multi-member bodies, concluding deliberations that spanned seven meetings,and  comprised most of the committee’s work since September.  

OCA is responsible for making recommendations to the Town Council  to fill most multiple-member bodies in town government, including committees, boards and commissions.  Different procedures apply to different bodies. OCA’s newly-adopted procedures will apply only to the Planning Board,  Zoning Board of Appeals, and to non-voting members of the Finance Committee.  

Certain appointments are the exclusive responsibility of the Town Council President, including appointments to the Council’s own committees  including OCA, the Government, Organization and Legislation Committee (GOL), the Community Resources Committee (CRC), and voting Finance Committee members.  Appointments to all other multi-member bodies are the primary responsibility of the Town Manager, subject to OCA review and approval of the Town Council. Procedures for those appointments remain largely unchanged.  

According to OCA Chair Evan Ross,  the aim of the new procedures is to balance transparency with the privacy interests of applicants, while complying with Open Meeting Law (OML).   A comprehensive review of all of the new procedures, and the debates that led to their adoption, can be found in Ross’ report to the Town Council and in OCA’s draft  document detailing the new process.

The new procedures cover the posting of board/committee vacancies, ,  along with the status of Community Activity Forms (CAF’s and evaluation of the applicant pool. The procedures also include candidate selection guidance, term limits, interview procedures, and the nature and timing of OCA’s recommendations to the Town Council. 

The most substantial and well-debated  changes center on interviews, transparency, and the adequacy of candidate pools. 

Interviews
The most significant change to OCA procedures is that interviews of candidates will now be conducted  in the form of a group interview including all candidates on a single day. The group interviews will be held in public and videotaped (as are all meetings of Council Committees), at a special meeting of OCA.  The meeting will be scheduled at the same time that the committee the candidates are applying for normally meets, to try avoid scheduling conflicts. All applicants for a given opening will be invited to the group interview. 

Candidates will be informed of the interview at least 14 days in advance, and the  time and date, along with the names of candidates will be announced to the public at least 48 hours in advance. OCA will adopt a particular set of questions for each board/committee. .  Each candidate will be asked the same set of questions and neither follow-up questions, nor deviation from the scripted questions will be allowed. Town Council members will be invited to attend, but will not be allowed to participate in the questioning.  

The process is modeled after existing procedures used to fill vacancies on elected bodies such as the School Committee. OCA will seek a  change to Town Rules and Procedures from the GOL to allow interview meetings to be conducted without public comment (which is normally required) to prevent campaigning or comments that might disparage a candidate.

Previously, interviews were held individually, were confidential, and were conducted by a single member of OCA in order to comply  with Open Meeting Law.   The Town Attorney had previously   said that the only way that OCA could conduct private/confidential interviews without triggering the open meeting requirement would be to post  the interviews as public meetings, conducted by a single councilor.. In reviewing its procedures, OCA was unable to find an OML-compliant way to involve multiple councilors and keep the interviews private.

Concerns were raised by a Council member that the new  public process might put some candidates at a disadvantage, and  might intimidate some candidates or discourage them from applying.  The new process could also unfairly favor candidates who had a strong public presence. Councilors wondered  whether the a panel format would in fact produce useful information. The new procedure was seen by most members of OCA as offering the advantages of completing the interview process efficiently with a single meeting, and creating a consistent experience for all candidates. 

The new public procedure marks somewhat of a departure in OCA’s approach to transparency, as the previous procedure stressed keeping the names and numbers of candidates confidential and the sole interviewer was not permitted to share the contents of the interviews, even with other members of OCA.  Community Activity Forms (CAFs)  which constitute the core of the formal application for appointment to all town MMB’s, will remain confidential.  While the public will now have some information about candidates prior to the Town Council approval, the time between the public interview and the Council vote is short, making public input on decisions unlikely. 

CAFs
CAF’s produced some heated discussion as they have throughout OCA’s first year. Multiple OCA members expressed a desire to have additional biographical information on the candidates beyond what is provided in the CAFs but apparently this will not be required and the CAF will remain the core source of information about candidates. OCA will continue to treat CAF’s as confidential personnel records and will continue its practice of not releasing to the public the number of applicants for any position though such information will become public eventually through the public interview process.   Public records requests earlier in the year from The Daily Hampshire Gazette and from Attorney Janet McGowan, required the Town to turn over CAFs but allowed the town to redact personal information and the information that was eventually  turned over was heavily redacted. Some OCA members and the Town Manager have argued that making the information in CAFs available to the public will discourage people from applying though this would seem to be at odds with the public interview process.   

Councilor Darcy Dumont (District 5) moved to make the CAFs and the number of applicants public but her motion failed for lack of a second.   This led Brewer to berate Dumont at length for “seeking transparency for transparency’s sake” which Brewer called “fake transparency”. She stated that she was personally offended that Dumont kept returning to this issue and demanded that she stop bringing it up when it has already been decided.  Ross emphasized that applications in hand were submitted with the understanding that the information contained in them would be confidential and hence must remain so, but he did not rule out revisiting the issue of confidentiality and of modifying the CAFs at a future date. Brewer acknowledged previous successful public records requests regarding CAFs but stressed that “we are in no way obligated to give the public any of our documents until they ask for them”.  Dumont pointed about that the information that is withheld by Amherst is routinely posted on the town web site in Northampton.

Brewer commented on the general inadequacy of the CAFs for making appointment decisions and the need to overhaul the form so that it would provide more useful information including indications of what specific value each candidate might add to the committee/board.   Under the new process, the Town Council will not disclose the number of candidates nor their names until the public announcement of the interview meeting. For appointments by the Town Manager, CAFs and number of candidates will remain confidential throughout the process though the Town Manager has agreed to share this information (confidentially) with all members of the Town Council.

Sufficiency of the Pool -Term Limits
Term limits have been a contentious issue within OCA throughout its first year and the issue garnered more discussion than any other in the course of revising OCA’s procedures. OCA sought to mediate the need for recruiting new people into MMB’s while at the same time not undermining the benefits to be derived from experience and established leadership.  OCA has adopted explicit language acknowledging term limits and their desirability but has left itself considerable flexibility in how to apply them. 

In his preliminary report, Ross notes that OCA has identified the following factors as important and desirable in creating a healthy multiple-member body and seeks a balance in fulfilling these two criteria.  

1) A strong base of seasoned members who have completed or nearly completed one term as member. These members bring an understanding of process, institutional knowledge, can mentor new members, and take on leadership roles.  

2) Newer members who have served fewer than one term. These members bring new energy, outlooks, and ideas to the body, and ensure the body will continue to have a strong base of seasoned members in the future. 

The following draft language has been adopted by OCA.

“Generally, if a person is serving a first term, they are given preference for a second. Conversely, if a person is completing a second term, and there are other qualified applicants, preference would be given to a newcomer (Appointed Committee Handbook Sec. 2.3). Although there is no fixed limit on length of service, the length of service is normally limited to two terms of three years in length. In cases where special training or expertise is required, longer periods of service may be appropriate.”

Councilors Dumont and  Sara Swartz (District 1) argued that more precise language is necessary to insure that term limits are applied.  Councilor George Ryan (District 3) argued that the new language offers sufficient flexibility to allow for a robust discussion about each candidate and that it allows OCA to impose term limits but also gives them the opening to appoint for a third term when they deem it appropriate.  

Sufficiency of the Pool – Diversity
OCA is often faced with a disparity between its aspiration for a large and diverse candidate pool and the reality of a small and not so diverse group of applicants. Ross notes that 

“OCA debated whether to have specific numerical or diversity thresholds that the applicant pool must meet in order for OCA to declare the pool sufficient to proceed with interviews. Some OCA members felt that OCA should not proceed with interviews unless there are more applicants than there are vacancies. Some OCA members also felt that if the pool did not contain demographic diversity it could not be considered sufficient. However, after a lengthy discussion OCA came to a consensus that having rigid thresholds could be overly restrictive. For example, if there is a vacancy on a committee and after a period of recruitment there is only one applicant for that vacancy, and that applicant is eminently qualified, it might not make sense to leave that vacancy open to the detriment of the committee when a qualified applicant is in the pool ready to serve. Further, extenuating circumstances, such as multiple vacancies that threaten the ability of the committee to have a quorum at meetings, may overrule a desire to have a large and rich applicant pool. OCA agreed to language that (1) highlights two qualities of the applicant pool that OCA will strive towards, (2) recognizes that an assessment of the pool should be done holistically and in context, and (3) eschews a rigid commitment to any particular threshold.”

As a result of those discussions OCA adopted the following language concerning adequacy of the pool.

1. the vacancy notice must be published on the Town Bulletin Board for a period not less than 14 days, any time after which OCA may assess the sufficiency of the applicant pool.
   
2. OCA shall collect all CAFs for the given positions that were submitted over the preceding two years. The OCA Chair or designee shall contact any applicant who submitted their CAF prior to the posting of the vacancy notice to confirm continued interest. The applicant pool shall be all CAFs submitted over the preceding two years for which applicants are currently interested. OCA shall assess the sufficiency of the applicant pool. In making a determination, OCA may consider the following factors:

• • The number of applicants relative to the number of vacancies or impending vacancies. OCA strives for more applicants than vacancies. 
• • _The demographic diversity of the applicant pool. OCA strives for a diverse applicant pool, including racial, economic, gender, and generational diversity.
• • _The current needs of the body-to-be-appointed, including any current burdens placed on the body by a vacancy. 

3. OCA assesses the applicant pool holistically in the context of the needs and history of the body-to-be-appointed. 

4. OCA shall, by majority vote, declare the applicant pool sufficient to proceed to interviews. Absent this declaration, OCA may engage in outreach to recruit additional applicants.

Next Steps
These new procedures will be presented to the Council as a report at their meeting of DEC 16^th.  Dumont proposed that these new procedures ought to be brought to a vote of the entire Council for approval and adoption but there was not support for this suggestion from the rest of the committee.  Brewer noted that OCA, like all other committees of the Council, sets its own internal policy. Ross noted that OCA had submitted to the Council a preliminary report on the proposed changes and had received feedback.   Later in the meeting on the 9^th,  OCA considered the feedback they received and responded to concerns that were raised.     

OCA will next meet at a special meeting schedule for Friday December 20.  This meeting is a follow up to the December 16 Town Council meeting, aimed  to amend the process according to councilor comments on the 16th. OCA will undertake its first appointments under the new procedures after the first of the year when it begins consideration of vacancies on the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals. 

Editor’s note: the documents cited herein including minutes of OCA meetings,  OCA’s report to the council on new procedures, and the draft document of OCA appointment procedures were not available to the public prior to OCA’s meetings on the December 2 and 9 and were still not posted on the Town website as of this writing.  They were acquired through public records requests filed by The Indy and we have made them available to the public here and here.