Beauty and the Beasts: Jennifer Cornett vs. Hoover City Leadership
Last Monday, the City of Hoover held its regularly scheduled city council meeting, during which the city’s chief financial officer, Jennifer Cornett, spoke. Ordinarily, the CFO would speak when presenting budget updates, during occasional budget amendments (Hoover has had many this year), and giving general operations information. However, Cornett’s first year has been anything but ordinary. In response to a request during a previous council meeting from Councilman Derrick Murphy, Cornett presented an update and plan for remedying some of the concerns raised in the secretly commissioned forensic audit by the nationally renowned firm Kroll. As previously reported by Alabama Today, Cornett, who started with the City of Hoover late last year, has been in a precarious position since day one. By all accounts, including the Kroll forensic audit, the regular auditor BMSS’s regular audits for years, the Gallagher report, and other internal investigations, the city’s financial offices have been understaffed for years due to the mayor’s lack of leadership in requesting funding or managing his staff. As Cornett detailed in her report on Monday, this understaffing and a general lack of accountability and management over the years have led to a host of problems she is now having to clean up. On Monday, as she has every time she’s addressed the Council, she stressed a commitment to transparency and accountability. A commitment that puts her directly at odds with others in city leadership, including Mayor Frank Brocato, who has seemingly, at every turn during this process, denied that problems existed, sought out the least transparent way forward to cover them up, and downplay them, and who, to this day, refuses to acknowledge it was during his tenure and because of his leadership failures that these problems were allowed to happen and remained for years. Cornett’s commitment to good governance is certainly at odds with the public position presented in word and action by City Attorney Phillip Corley, who has sat back as the mayor, mayor’s staff, and City Council President John Lyda declared publically that they are shielded from their actions, words, and failure to act by Corley directing or allowing them to declare “attorney/client privilege” as if it’s a “Get out of Jail” free card in a game of Monopoly. Anyone who has been to council meetings or had any interaction with the council, be it on the forensic audit, asking questions about the Riverwalk Development or costs related to the Certificate of Need hearings, have seen Corley use his Alabama Bar Association membership as both a weapon and a shield to allow himself and everyone around him to avoid transparency and accountability. When he or his friends don’t want to answer a question or an inquiry, Corley declares “it’s privileged.” Again, public records laws and other laws be damned, though we have heard from both the mayor and CFO recently that the attorney general’s office has finally been called to look into what they want to be investigated. In one instance of the questionable use of privilege, Lyda sent an email to the rest of the council seeking approval for the forensic audit, an email that the city failed to produce in a public records request, even though it was just one councilor to others with no legal counsel included. That didn’t stop Corley from withholding said document from a public records request. Finally, Cornett’s pledge is at odds with the Council, which, under Lyda’s leadership, has been all but ambivalent about developing and maintaining the checks and balances required to correct the multitude of problems facing the city. One could only imagine if, rather than the beasts at city hall deflecting blame and responsibility, hiding plans, cutting backroom deals, picking fights with one another, and all the madness we’ve seen in Hoover since early this year, how beautiful, peaceful and productive growing and governing could be.
Fact Check: City of Hoover City Attorney Phillip Corley Jr. Statement on Council videos
The Alabama Department of Archives and History, through its Records Management Section, manages guidance for the retention of public records in the state. In November 2022, the Hoover Sun reported on changes to the City of Hoover’s record retention. In that article, Jon Anderson quotes the city attorney Phillip Corley, saying, “However, temporary recordings should be deleted once minutes are approved according to the Records Disposition Authority issued by the Alabama Local Government Records Commission,” Corley wrote. “Another alternative would be to livestream only with no recordings or not to livestream at all. Transparency under Alabama law means that the meetings are open to the public and minutes of what was done at those meetings are made available to the public. The minutes are permanent public records and the official record of actions taken at a meeting.” Claim: “temporary recordings should be deleted once minutes are approved according to the Records Disposition Authority” (Emphasis added) Fact: “The Records Disposition Authority lists the minimum time that agencies must keep records that are created. Agencies may choose to keep records longer.” Rating: Pants on Fire Sources: Per State and Local Records Coordinator, Appraisal & Records Management Program, Alabama Department of Archives and History: The Records Disposition Authority, approved by the Local Government Records Commission, lists “Recordings of Meetings” as having a retention of “retain until minutes are approved.” The Local Government Records Commission does not dictate where those recordings are housed or whether a record must be created. The Records Disposition Authority lists the minimum time that agencies must keep records that are created. Agencies may choose to keep records longer. RDAs may be found on our website on the Manage Records tab > Local Agencies > Retention Schedules. Please see the retention below for Recordings of Meetings in the Municipalities RDA. 1.04 Recordings of Meetings. Audio or video recordings provide a verbatim account of debate and public input at meetings of the municipal council and municipal boards, commissions, or similar bodies. They are normally used only as an aid to preparation of the minutes . Disposition: Temporary Record. Retain until minutes are approved. Earliest electronic files available show Recordings of Meetings in the Municipalities 2000 RDA with a retention of “Retain 1 year after the end of the fiscal year in which the minutes were approved.” In July 2002, the retention of the Recordings of Meetings was changed to “Retain until minutes are approved.” A notation was added to the description in section two “(revised in conformity with other RDAs).” A random sampling of Alabama cities that maintain videos online: City of Mobile: 1,019 videos: YouTube City of Montgomery videos go back 12-months: City Website City of Selma (Which hasn’t been updated since Jan. 2023. Videos go back to 9/30/2021): City Website City of Huntsville 205 pages of city council videos going back to May 2017: City Website
