Provo mayor, council issue fighting words

PROVO — The mayor of Provo is accusing the City Council of holding illegal, closed meetings.

The council chairman, a former mayor, is firing back. He says the mayor is wrong and is using "untrue and unwarranted innuendos."

And attorneys for both sides say their man is right and the other is wrong.

Mayor Lewis Billings vetoed an ordinance late Wednesday, then informed the City Council of the veto in a letter that was meant to remain private, city spokeswoman Raylene Ireland said.

But it isn't the veto that became the talk of Provo politics.

Instead, it's Billings complaint in the letter that closed meetings held by the City Council's three-member land-use subcommittee are bad policy.

Billings said other council members, the public, developers and others are not allowed to attend the meetings and that the three members of the subcommittee make decisions and then "selectively reach out to other members of the Council in an effort to obtain the needed 'one more' vote."

"This is not good process and in the opinion of the administration fails to meet the requirements of the Utah Open and Public Meetings Act."

Billings called for all council subcommittee meetings to be noticed as full council meetings are, in the Deseret Morning News and in public places like the city center and the city library.

He also called for minutes to be kept, as they are for subcommittees in Congress and the state Legislature.

Council chairman George Stewart, who proceeded Billings as mayor, has wrangled with Billings several times during the 14 months since he returned to Provo politics as a council member.

He strongly objected to the mayor's letter in one of his own.

"Your comments seem to intimate that in some sinister way, the votes on land-use issues are predetermined by the land-use committee plus 'the needed one more vote.' The facts do not bear out this innuendo," Stewart wrote.

There is no land-use voting block, Stewart said, and the public is well served by the process he implemented because all items considered by the land-use committee first go through the Planning Commission, then are considered in open city council meetings.

Planning Commission meetings are noticed and public.

City Attorney Robert West backed his boss, Billings.