What started just a few weeks ago as a snarky text exchange among three city councilors during a committee meeting has turned into a legal spectacle that has ensnared everyone from City Hall security guards to the mayor.
At the center of it all are Councilors Laura Bellis, Lori Decter Wright, Vanessa Hall-Harper and Grant Miller — and Miller’s boss, attorney Ronald Durbin.
Miller was the person who wanted to know what Bellis, Hall-Harper and Wright were texting about that March day, so he took pen to paper and wrote out an open records request for the text messages.
“10M Gilcrease $ for housing. Miller is ridiculous,” Wright had texted, a reference to Miller’s suggestion that funding targeted for the new Gilcrease Museum be used to address homelessness.
“RIDICULOUS,” responded Bellis. Hall-Harper did not respond.
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A few days later, on March 27, came another open records request, this one from Durbin. In it, he seeks, among other things, all emails, text messages, instant messages or other electronic communications related to city business sent and/or received by Bellis, Hall-Harper and Wright dating back to Jan. 1, 2018.
Durbin asked that the city have the documents ready for duplication within five days and contact him if there was a delay in fulfilling the request. An initial analysis of the request by the city’s Information Technology Department identified more than 95,000 items that could potentially be subject to the request.
The Oklahoma Open Records Act states that a public body must provide “prompt, reasonable access to its records” but also allows for the establishment of reasonable procedures to protect the integrity and organization of records and “prevent excessive disruptions of its essential functions.”
A week after Miller requested his colleagues’ text messages, Durbin stood in front of City Council chambers as councilors were filing into their regularly scheduled 5 p.m. meeting to announce that he had filed a lawsuit against Wright, Hall-Harper, Bellis and the city of Tulsa in Tulsa County District Court alleging violations of the state Open Meeting Act.
Attorney Ron Durbin speaks Wednesday alongside plaintiff Freeman Culver, Greenwood Chamber of Commerce.
The plaintiff in the case is Freeman Culver, executive director of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce.
“The fact that I knew Grant (Miller) is probably why I knew that those messages and things were going on, but Grant didn’t ask me to file anything,” Durbin said in an interview with the Tulsa World. “This was all my decision that I was going to do something, and Rev. Culver had been communicating and wanted to do something about it.
“So he was willing to step up and do something about it, and I was willing to do the work until we got paid from the city. It really is that simple. … There is no more dark conspiracies or hidden agendas.”
The lawsuit seeks a declaratory judgment from the court finding that the defendants violated the Open Meeting Act by texting during the council committee meeting and that all actions at any City Council meeting be declared invalid if electronic communications were used in violation of the act.
The lawsuit also seeks an emergency injunctive order compelling the defendants to refrain from any further public meetings or hearings until the alleged violations are addressed.
Bellis, Hall-Harper and Wright were sued in their official capacities as city councilors, and as such their representation is being provided by the city. The city declined to comment for this story, noting that it does not comment on pending litigation.
Miller has said he is not a party to the lawsuit, and he is not named in the document. But Culver’s allegations are similar to the ones Miller has been making since he requested his colleagues’ text messages. And in his role as an employee for Durbin’s law firm, Veridian Legal Services, Miller has helped promote the lawsuit and press conference to the media.
“My interest is, you know, if they want to text about their own private business, that is up to their constituents to decide whether or not they want to elect a councilor who is going to sit in a meeting (and) text the whole time about, you know, whatever it is they are texting about. …,” Miller said.
“But when it comes to talking about city business, my interest is, as I said, government transparency and open meetings.”
If successful, the lawsuit could throw a wrench into the work of the city as councilors and Mayor G.T. Bynum put together the city’s fiscal year 2024 budget and a $772 million Improve Our Tulsa extension that is scheduled to go to voters in August.
Live-streaming visits to City Hall
For a City Council and mayor that have worked hard to present an image of collegiality and unity — if not always harmony — the episode has been trying. Miller and Durbin have not been shy about sharing their concerns publicly, posting frequent updates on their social media accounts.
And Durbin makes sure to livestream his visits to City Hall and other government offices in search of public records. The results have not always been to his liking, and he has made that clear, sometimes lobbing insults and profanities at those individuals he believes are standing in his way.
On the afternoon of March 31, Durbin went to City Hall to review grant records. When a security guard asked him to sign in and provide identification, Durbin declined.
“I am going to a public building for a public purpose for a public request, and I prefer not to sign in or give you my identification,” he can be heard telling the guard on a video of the visit posted on the Facebook page of Durbin’s law firm.
Durbin eventually provided his ID, but the back-and-forth between the attorney and city security inside City Hall ended with Durbin’s alleging that he had been assaulted by guards seeking to limit his access inside the building.
“Dude, do not f——— touch me, man,” Durbin says in the video. “Back up, back up! Do not touch me, you f———- piece of s—-. You put your motherf——— hands on me.”
He was back at City Hall last week, cameras rolling, this time asking to inspect all funding records related to the city’s American Rescue Plan Act spending and the Gilcrease Museum reconstruction project.
Durbin refused to fill out an open records request form, saying he was not required to under the state’s Open Records Act. He went on to call City Attorney Jack Blair a “coward” for sending someone else to respond to his request, and when informed by a city employee that the records he was seeking would have to be gathered before he could review them, Durbin promised a lawsuit.
“You have access to them electronically. I would like to look at them now before you have the opportunity to alter anything,” he said, adding, “Ma’am, I am sorry that I don’t trust that you are going to amend the documents that I am here during public business hours to publicly inspect records that I don’t want you to have the opportunity to falsify or alter.”
He made good on that promise a few days later when he filed another lawsuit in Tulsa County District Court, this one alleging that Bynum, Blair, three security guards, Councilor Christian Bengel and other city employees had violated the Open Records Act.
A city spokesperson said that as of Wednesday, Durbin had not provided the city with a written list of the specific records he was looking to inspect. Durbin said Friday that he submitted a written records request to the city on Thursday. City Hall was closed Friday.
Durbin and Miller say they attempted to address the issue before it ended up in court.
“I just said: ‘Acknowledge that the communications during meetings amongst councilors via text message is, if not a direct violation of the Open Meeting Act, it is at least a violation in terms of the spirit of the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act and that we should at the city of Tulsa adopt a policy that says in the future we’re not going to do that anymore,’” Durbin said.
Bellis, Hall-Harper and Wright, meanwhile, have requested a meeting with the entire council to discuss how Oklahoma’s Open Records and Open Meeting acts pertain to “various technology devices including smart phones, laptops, tablets, wearables, and other communication devices.”
A trip to Oklahoma City
This is not the first time Durbin and Miller have teamed up to publicly pressure government agencies for records.
In March, they made a trip to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control in Oklahoma City to review documents they had previously requested. Again, Durbin livestreamed the visit on his law firm’s Facebook page.
Both men have interests in the medical marijuana business — Durbin as an attorney and Miller as the owner of a cannabis cultivation facility — and Durbin has filed a lawsuit against the drug bureau accusing it of violating the state’s Open Meeting Act.
When bureau spokesman Mark Woodward informed them that the bureau was still working on the request and that the records were not available for review, Durbin called the Oklahoma City Police Department to report a violation of the Open Records Act and to ask that an officer be sent to take a report.
As they waited for the officer to arrive, Woodward, Durbin, Miller and others talked in the lobby. At one point, Woodward commented that he was sensitive to the smell of marijuana, to which Durbin responded:
“Shut the f—- up. I am tired of listening to you about that,” Durbin said. “You won’t give me any f——— records, but you want to sit here and run your mouth about a smell you don’t find pleasurable. I don’t find the smell of your f——— agency pleasurable.”
Eventually it was established that the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, not the Oklahoma City Police Department, was the appropriate agency to respond to Durbin’s call, and an OHP lieutenant was called to the scene.
That conversation did not end well, either, with Durbin using profane language and accusing OHP troopers of not wanting to wear body cams “because then they would be accountable for what they do.”
Miller said he has no opinion regarding how Durbin handled the situation and that he was present as an employee of Veridian Legal Services, not as a Tulsa city councilor.
“We are trying to uncover when state agencies and now municipal agencies are not complying with the Open Records and Open Meeting acts,” Miller said. “Really, it boils down to that. Now, how Ron decides to handle that is up to Ron, and it is not my place to speak about how he goes about that as an attorney and as a person.”
Durbin declined to answer questions about the visit to the narcotics bureau.
