Clark County Councilor David Madore came under fire from his council peers Wednesday after they learned he’d directed a staff member to create a page on the county’s official website on which he could post public documents of his choosing and link to them from Facebook.
The Republican councilor said his goal with the page, known as the “C-Grid,” was transparency and getting information to the public that people otherwise would have to specifically request. Republican Councilor Tom Mielke supported him.
“I think it’s important that any legal document be a public document,” Mielke said. “There’s so much that goes on that the public doesn’t know about.”
Council Chair Marc Boldt, no party preference, and Republican councilors Jeanne Stewart and Julie Olson took issue with the fact that C-Grid wasn’t sanctioned by the board through a public process — Madore had asked Acting County Manager Mark McCauley to create the page in late 2014.
“At the time, it seemed like a reasonable request, so we created it,” McCauley told the board Wednesday.
It’s tough to find C-Grid without the Web address. On Clark County’s website’s home page, there are buttons linking to “The Grid,” which contains county council agendas and documents, and to the county manager’s Contracts Grid, which contains contracts and bid award documents. There’s no button for C-Grid, and typing in “C-Grid” or “C Grid” in the search bar doesn’t lead to the page.
McCauley said later that the other councilors never were given official notice about the page.
“I don’t believe I ever went to them and said, ‘Hey, there’s a new grid called the C-Grid,'” he said.
The three councilors also thought it was inappropriate for Madore to post public documents not directly related to county business on C-Grid, in particular, documents from a lawsuit that bus transit system C-Tran had filed against citizens.
Clark County had threatened to sue C-Tran in late 2014 over alleged open-meeting violations but didn’t. Instead, a group of citizens filed the same lawsuit, but the case was thrown out. Now a judge has ordered the citizens to pay C-Tran’s attorneys’ fees.
Madore had written a post Tuesday on his personal Facebook page about the case and linked to the court documents on C-Grid. In his Facebook post, he called the judge “foolish” and said that citizens should be “outraged by the injustice of this rogue agency,” referring to C-Tran.
Wednesday, Boldt told Madore that if he simply posted the lawsuit on C-Grid without comment, that would be one thing. But making remarks about the judge on Facebook and then linking to the documents was “unprofessional,” Boldt said.
“You made the whole thing look like it was official,” he said.
Madore looked at the ceiling and smiled.
“Any time we tell a story to the citizens in any way, the smartest thing we can do is provide documentation to show the actual documents,” Madore said.
He couldn’t attach the documents to his Facebook post because the file sizes were too big, said Madore, adding that they had been mailed to him in an official capacity. If they’re public documents and normally wouldn’t be on the other county grids, “Where else would they go? We have to put them somewhere,” he said.
Lastly, Boldt was aghast that Madore posted a code enforcement cease-and-desist letter on C-Grid against a marijuana dispensary, calling it “disrespectful” to the citizen by singling him out.
“That’s terrible,” Boldt said, asking whether he should post on C-Grid the four code enforcement cases he has on his desk. “Just like any person who has a code enforcement case, right or wrong, they should never be defamed over it.”
In the end, the entire board agreed to freeze C-Grid and not post anything else on it.
