Saturday, April 20, 2024
The Coryell County Commissioners Court recently voted to make the county clerk's office the official custodian for all audio recordings of the commissioners court.
The commissioners court voted on the issue following a motion by Pct. 1 Commissioner Kyle Matthews during the April 11 meeting of the commissioner court.
"We can't have court without the clerk, and I think her office should maintain all records," Matthews said.
Commissioner Scott Weddle said during the COVID-19 disruptions, he recalled the meetings being posted online.
"At one point these meetings were recorded and posted on our website," Weddle said. "I have received requests that be done again. I think we all agree transparency is important. It should be public record — we are recording it."
County Judge Roger Miller said there are two factors to consider.
"Number 1, the county clerk is responsible for the minutes (detailed notes taken during meetings)," Miller said. "The audio recordings are mandated for counties of a certain size and we have not met that (threshold)."
"I think that threshold has to do with whether the meetings have to be streamed live," Matthews said.
Miller said another factor is making sure the county funds the clerk's department to make sure she has the tools required to maintain the records.
"If the court chose to do that we would need to fund a mechanism for that," Miller said.
Matthews then asked County Clerk Jennifer Newton for her thoughts.
"Would you object to being the custodian of recordings of the commissioners court?" he asked.
"No — it's within my job responsibilities," Newton said.
Weddle said he would like quicker access to the recordings.
"Also, why do we not continue to post that on our website?" he asked. "We were doing that and it just stopped."
"I don't ever recall us posting the audio recordings," Miller said. "I do know there had been an effort to get audio recordings posted, but I don't know that we ever did that."
Matthews said his "true concern about the custodian or keeper of the records" is that it continues to meet legal requirements, and that he believed that should be the role of the county clerk's office — the entire department — rather than one single person.
"There is a conversion process that goes on post meeting," Miller said. "That can take hours but it is available to any member of the court or the public within 48 hours."
Weddle seconded Matthews' motion to make the county clerk's office the keeper of audio recordings.
"Y'all need to set the parameters — we do a lot of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, I'm going to assume the county judge is doing that for now," Newton said. She added that if her department takes over those requests, "it's a whole different ball game. The complaints we get are that y'all don't have microphones — y'all are very hard to hear. They probably should be clear.
"The deciding factor is we need to have funding (for the recording mechanism and microphones) and we would need to put them on the website just like the minutes."
