City manager pick, newspaper clashed over information policy
Was Kalispell's prospective new city manager, Matt McKillip, reluctant to produce public information while he was mayor of Kokomo, Ind.?
The Kokomo Tribune newspaper says yes.
McKillip says no.
When the Kalispell City Council interviewed the five finalists for city manager on June 3, it asked each candidate about promoting transparency in the local government.
All five gave very pro-transparency answers.
McKillip told the Kalispell council that he helped improve city government openness in Kokomo.
However from 2005 to 2007, the Kokomo paper wrote several stories about clashing with him and his administration on obtaining public records. The Tribune also wrote several times about McKillip not returning numerous phone calls for comments and elaborations.
In a Saturday interview, McKillip said he returned phone calls and produced public records in a timely fashion -and that some delays in providing information to the Tribune were due to the Kokomo city attorney's decisions.
"I got along well with the Tribune," McKillip said - except for reporter Scott Smith, who covers the Kokomo city government. McKillip described Smith's work as 'very inaccurate reporting, very biased reporting."
Tribune managing editor Jeff Kovaleski said Smith is an experienced, veteran reporter. ""We stand by his reporting and his accuracy, and we wish Matt all our best wishes in his future endeavors."
Kalispell Mayor Pam Kennedy said McKillip's clashes with the Tribune did not come up in the city's background checks.
Several times, the Kokomo Tribune published a "Countdown To Compliance" that listed five cases of the city delaying releasing information. The newspaper sought rulings in 2006 from the Indiana State Public Access Counselor's Office on whether the delays were justified.
The paper reported that the state office ruled that the city failed to provide information in a reasonable time in all five cases.
The highest-profile matter was a 2006 personal vacation to Europe by McKillip and Kokomo city controller Phil Williams. While on vacation, the pair went to Braga, Portugal, for two days and put some expenses on the city's tab.
On Saturday, McKillip said they took time from their own vacation to visit Braga to explore setting up a 'sister city" relationship with Kokomo.
The Tribune requested copies of the Braga-related bills from the city -and had to wait 13 weeks before getting them.
In fact, the city government released the bills to a competing newspaper a few days prior to releasing them to the Tribune.
The bills totaled almost $669.
They broke down to $528 for two nights at a hotel, $138 for a dinner and less than $3 for parking, the Tribune reported.
The Tribune also wrote that when it received copies of the Braga bills, the chairman of the Kokomo City Council's finance committee had not received the same documents despite requesting them 11 weeks earlier.
Braga and Kokomo never became sister cities.
The other four Tribune public-records complaints covered requests for specific receipts that took more than 10 weeks to be filled, and some requests for lists of expenses that took longer than 13 weeks to be filled. The requests went to Williams, the city controller.
The Tribune's requested lists of expenses covered an itemized list of money spent on the city government's cable access channel, all of the city legal expenses for most of 2006, and an itemized list of spending on landscaping and beautification.
On Saturday, McKillip said the city government had no qualms about providing public records, and that the city attorney's and controller's offices were more involved in those matters than him.
But McKillip added that Indiana law does not require a city government to create new public records. And he contended that compiling itemized financial lists would be creating new records.
He said a reporter could sit with the raw financial data and compile such itemized lists.
McKillip clashed with the Tribune and the Kokomo city council on other disclosure issues, including:
n In July 2007, city controller Williams refused to provide the Tribune a copy of the McKillip's 2008 budget proposal to the city council on the same day that the council received the document.
McKillip issued a press statement on that budget proposal, but would not answer the Tribune's questions seeking elaboration. Williams also directed department heads to refer press questions to him.
On Saturday, McKillip said the public and media had several chances to scrutinize the budget and its changes as the hearings and council meetings later unfolded.
n The city lost a 2005-06 open-records legal battle over a teenage boy seeking a list of e-mail addresses that received the city's electronic newsletters.
The high school student, Ryan Nees, told the Tribune he wanted to compare the city's list with a list of e-mail addresses that receive McKillip's political e-mails - after receiving such a political e-mail.
But on Saturday, McKillip said that Nees wanted to use the requested list for the boy's own political e-mails. "Overwhelmingly, the public told us not to share the list," McKillip said.
The Tribune reported the city administration told Nees it would not provide him such a list, but he could hand-copy it. The boy filed a lawsuit in the county circuit court - and won. The city attorney decided not to appeal.
The newspaper reported the city spent $23,000 defending itself and had to pay an additional $11,000 for Nees' attorney fees.
McKillip said if he could do it over, he would have pushed for an appeal -believing his side would have won.
n McKillip lost a 2005-06 dispute with the Indiana State Public Access Counselor's Office over charging $1 per page to photocopy city documents when the Kokomo City Council reduced the charge to 25 cents a page.
McKillip argued in 2006 that the $1-per-page fee was needed to cover copying labor costs, the Tribune reported. In 2005, the Tribune obtained an informal opinion from the state's public access counselor's office that $1 per page was excessive. The paper reported most county agencies charged 20 cents a page.