Georgetown City Council Member Pat Berryman has taken $13,600 from the taxpayers of Georgetown to which she is not legally entitled. As detailed in the accompanying investigative report, she appears to have violated both the Texas Constitution and her oath of office.

In investigating this matter, using the Texas Public Information Act, I filed the seven open records requests with the City of Georgetown between February 12 and April 15. I have obtained some of the records requested and the accompanying report is based on those records. City Attorney Mark Sokolow referred many of the open records requests to the Texas Attorney General for a determination.

Berryman—who was a state employee barred by the Texas Constitution from drawing a salary for serving on the city council—was informed of that by the city manager in July 2008. The city manager’s letter told her she would be reimbursed for her actual expenses if she supplied receipts. She did not do so.

She waited 17 months—until the city hired a new in-house attorney—to request payment. Even then she provided no information that would satisfy the requirements of the Texas Constitution, as interpreted by several attorney general opinions. The new city attorney—who serves at the pleasure of the city council—facilitated the back payment.

Council Member Berryman has not been forthcoming about this matter. She has not responded to numerous requests for an interview. She has stonewalled and evaded responsibility for her actions.

City Attorney Sokolow conveyed a transparently flimsy offer on her behalf: “If requested by the State, Council Member Berryman is quite willing to provide additional documents to state officials who so request.”

Who are these “state officials” to whom Berryman would be accountable? Neither Sokolow nor Berryman say. Would a call from the attorney general's office suffice? Will a prosecutor be needed to unearth the truth in this matter?

Obviously no one can be compelled to talk to a journalist. But if an elected official refuses to answer pertinent questions about her conduct and defend her actions in the court of public opinion, it would appear more a matter of evasion than the transparency to which the governing body of Georgetown, Texas, professes it aspires.

Georgetown Mayor George Garver told The Austin Bulldog, in an interview at city hall after the April 27 City Council meeting, that he was not aware of the payment of $13,600 made to Council Member Berryman. It seems no one on the city staff bothered to tell him.

“I was not aware that she was being funded with any of the city’s compensation. Later through the grapevine I heard something to that effect, but I never inquired into the particulars, nor was I offered any information. That wasn’t transparent.”

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—Ken Martin