Burlington City Councilor Karen Paul Credit: Matt Thorsen
An email that Burlington City Councilor Karen Paul wrote to Mayor Miro Weinberger shortly before she announced that she would recuse herself from a vote on the sale of Burlington Telecom is exempt from disclosure under the Vermont Public Records Law, a judge ruled Monday.

Vermont Superior Court Judge Robert Mello decided the case in favor of the city and against Da Capo Publishing, parent company of Seven Days.

The newspaper sought the email last year and challenged the city’s denial in court.

Mello sided with city lawyers who said the email falls under a provision of the records law that shields communications between city departments when they are preliminary to policy determination or action.

At a hearing last week, an attorney for Seven Days, Jared Carter of the nonprofit Vermont Community Law Center, argued that a city councilor is not a city department. Carter also argued that an overly broad reading of the exemption would threaten government transparency and go against the spirit of the law.

Mello disagreed. He reviewed the email privately and determined that the content fell within the parameters of communication that should be shielded to allow public officials to have full and frank discussions before deciding an official action.

According to the judge’s ruling, the email does not include discussion of Paul’s reason to recuse herself. It does include Paul’s opinions and observations regarding a future vote by the council, Mello wrote.

Paul initially announced her intention not to vote due to an unexplained professional conflict of interest. Afterward, she quit her job at a local accounting firm.

She then voted on the closely watched sale of Burlington Telecom after all, but she never publicly divulged her reason for initially planning to recuse herself.

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Molly Walsh was a Seven Days staff writer 2015-20.

7 replies on “Judge: Burlington Can Withhold Councilor’s Email From Seven Days”

  2. THANK YOU Seven Days for your courageous suit and taking this important issue to court. As a Burlingtonian I am deeply disappointed and disturbed by Judge Mello’s ruling.

    This is a sad day for transparency and ethical governance; qualities this councilor badly lacks. We must do better as a City and we must hold elected officials up to a higher ethical standard.

    $30+ Million transactions of City assets are the PUBLIC’S transactions and the public deserves to know all details, circumstances and conflicts of interest of participating decision-makers. Otherwise, how am I assured she was acting with fiduciary responsibility? Because she said so? Karen Paul ought to quit playing with taxpayers’ assets as if they’re her own personal retirement portfolio.

  3. A city councilor quits a job estimated to be paying her somewhere between $75,000 and $125,000 so she can avoid a “conflict” and vote on the sale of a municipal TV franchise.

    If this isn’t scandalous, then the word has a new meaning.

    The only person with more questions about this than those of us who pay the taxes is the councilor’s husband, who is wondering whether his wife’s alleged martyrdom – which cost their household some serious money – is worth the good government she actually thinks she is promoting.

  4. What are they trying to hide?? Bunch of lies? Bunch of truths? OR someone’s sticky fingers??

  5. Incredible. This stinks to high heaven, I hope this setup is rejected and they’re forced to redo the deal in the full light of day. Nobody gives up a job that pays $75,000+ without some other other kind of compensation coming in to replace it. This looks entirely too suspicious to allow to proceed. What is the big deal about allowing the citizens to see how the deal was conducted and what influences the votes of the city council ? This IS STILL the United States, correct? I’d like to be assured the city isn’t being sold out by it’s politicians. The best description of this deal nowadays would be SWAMPY.

  6. This is the second such decision by Judge Mello deciding against public disclosure of secret email communications by public officials, the first being to allow former VT Attorney General William Sorrell to withhold from release work related emails created using a private email account. I can’t figure out his logic for the life of me. Suffice to say that I am in strong disagreement as the VT Public Records Act expects the law to be liberally construed in favor of disclosure wherever possible. This decision would seem to violate that overarching policy objective.

  7. Wow! Fifty, sixty, seventy people disliking a comment. Where do these people come from? They seem to agree with the judge, and do not want to hear opinions contrary. I can’t tell if they want to know anything. Well, this is the comments, and people are commenting – sorry about that. Free country.
    It would be nice to hear their opinions rather than just telling us they dislike another.

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