The Martin Chronicles has confirmed from multiple sources that Villa Hills Mayor Mike Martin and Councilman Mike Pope have been caught intentionally shifting the dates and times of finance committee meetings and purposefully avoiding quorums to hide their improper discussions about a City employee from the public. We suspect these secret meetings are part of the Martin “scorched earth” defense we wrote about in our recent Wednesday, February 22 post.
Pope’s odd question to the City Attorney posed at the February council meeting now makes some sense. Pope asked if a committee would still be obligated to take minutes or keep any other record of a meeting if it was held without a quorum. The City Attorney advised Pope that no minutes or other records would be required at such a meeting. The Martin Chronicles is going to check with our own Open Meetings expert to verify the accuracy of the City Attorney’s advice.
All the pieces of this appalling puzzle are starting to fit snugly together. We now also understand why Martin and Pope had asked some members of the finance committee not to attend their last meeting. The mayor and his crony councilman wanted to act under the cover of darkness with no record of their action.
The rest of City Council has now been notified of these latest Martin and Pope antics. This newest nitwittery further weakens the taxpayers’ position as it defends itself from a lawsuit filed by the aforementioned City employee. Look for calls for Martin’s resignation to intensify. We may now also hear strong suggestions that Pope follow the mayor out the door.
The Martin Chronicles also has a serious question. Martin and Pope have now demonstrated numerous times that they lack the honesty and integrity for public service. We wonder why other members of the finance committee, by virtually all accounts decent people-the antithesis of Martin and Pope-, are allowing themselves to be pulled into this latest of too many scandals. Some of these other members have professional licenses they may be placing in jeopardy. All of these other members have solid reputations that may be sullied. When will one or more of them speak out? Or, at least walk away from the committee when it is behaving in such an unseemly way.
We have also confirmed that an official request has been sent to the City Attorney asking that he investigate Martin and Pope’s secret finance committee dealings. Look for the drunken drones at the Civic Club and other hand-wringing Martin apologists to complain that more money is being “wasted” on legal fees. These wrong-headed whiners completely miss the shocking point that they are the ones being placed in financial jeopardy by Martin and Pope’s wrongdoing. Martin’s continued malfeasance is the root cause of all of these growing problems.
How ironic is it that Councilman Mike Pope once used his now-defunct “alternate-reality” website to accuse his council colleagues of holding a secret meeting simply because it wasn’t televised on a local government channel? Then his lame excuse for this libelous charge was that it was merely “a joke”. Pathetic. A couple of years later and now Pope is conspiring with the mayor to actively organize and facilitate actual secret meetings with hand-picked members of the finance committee. This is certainly no joke.
The good news? Their misdeeds have been discovered and are being reported to you. Our investigative reporters are already chasing down new leads on this sordid story.
