Denton council member Brandon Chase McGee retracts statements — again

First, Denton City Council member Brandon McGee’s educational background came into question at a League of Women Voters of Denton candidate forum in April, when it was learned McGee didn’t, in fact, have a master’s in public administration from the University of North Texas.

McGee said he had dictated his educational background to a UNT student who worked as one of his campaign managers and told the Record-Chronicle in an April 25 report, “Perhaps he got it wrong. … When you call me and I get something wrong, it’s not a big deal to me. I just fix it.”

Then, at a council retreat last weekend, McGee announced he’d been “an alternate in 2006 in Torino [Palavela]” for the Olympics. But he claimed he didn’t mean he was an Olympic alternate when the Record-Chronicle contacted him Wednesday evening to discuss why his supporters thought he was going to vote against a resolution he had supported.

Now, McGee claims he has misspoken again and is retracting his statement about meeting with three colleagues on the council to discuss their stance on the resolution before he voted on Tuesday evening, as he had told the Record-Chronicle for a report Wednesday.

“I’ll accept responsibility for that,” McGee said Thursday. “It was my mistake. My first time on council. My bad.”

According to the transcript of his conversation Wednesday with the Record-Chronicle, McGee was discussing what led to his decision on Tuesday evening after several of his supporters had discovered he was thinking about changing his vote, a claim McGee disputes:

“I wanted to make sure the [resolution’s] language was crystal clear and [would] pass legal and that the language wasn’t going to put their [council members’] lives in danger and that it followed state and federal law. I wanted to go to colleagues and the three colleagues who voted no and see if they were willing to work together and talk with each other, and that is what I spent my time doing up to when I took the dais [on Tuesday]. There was no flip-flopping. This is what we should be doing.”

Those three colleagues who voted no were council members Jesse Davis and Chris Watts and Mayor Gerard Hudspeth.

When asked to explain whether he had violated the Texas Open Meetings Act by having a “walking quorum,” McGee retracted what he originally had said and claimed, “I didn’t speak to the mayor or Watts, and I did speak with Ms. Maguire and Mr. Davis, and that is what I spent my conversation doing.”

On Thursday afternoon, McGee called the Record-Chronicle because, he said, someone had called him and asked if he had violated quorum for speaking with the three council members who had voted no.

The Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, a nonprofit that focuses on educating the public about open meetings and public information, says a walking quorum occurs when a council member discusses an issue on an agenda with another council member and then goes to another council member and tells that person what the other council member said. It’s known as the “daisy chain” effect.

But it is a gray area and requires a legal determination. A violation could carry criminal and/or civil penalties.

When the Record-Chronicle‘s article about McGee’s decision appeared Wednesday on social media, one commenter highlighted a section of the story where McGee discussed meeting with council members and suggested McGee might have violated the Open Meetings Act.

McGee denies this claim.

“People are asking questions,” McGee reiterated. “I didn’t talk to the mayor or Mr. Watts about the resolution. Davis and I talked about it after the work session, and Alison and I talked about it. I don’t remember when I talked with her about it. I didn’t talk to Ms. Vicki [Byrd] about that.”

The Record-Chronicle asked McGee for the contact information of the UNT student who had assisted his campaign in the spring, but he wouldn’t provide it. The Record-Chronicle reached out to the student via social media, but he hadn’t responded by late Thursday.

As for his claim regarding the Olympics, the Record-Chronicle asked McGee to explain why he would tell council members and staff at the council retreat he was an alternate for the 2006 Olympics if he had never been an alternate.

“I’m not sure what I said,” he said. “But I was working to be an Olympic alternate, and if I have misspoken, I apologize. That is what I meant. It was always my dream. I went to Torino on vacation with my family a couple of years earlier and set my sights on that. That was my goal; that was what we [he and his figure skating partner] were striving to be.”

The Record-Chronicle contacted the other council members and Mayor Hudspeth on Thursday. Davis sent an email Thursday afternoon and stated he did meet with McGee.

“I did speak with councilmember McGee about the resolution,” Davis wrote. “I was not aware he had spoken with other council members about it and wasn’t aware of him meeting with other council members.”

Maguire didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Record-Chronicle spoke with the mayor by phone Thursday evening. Hudspeth said he had spoken with McGee on three different occasions, all brief conversations, about the resolution but never held a meeting with him about it.

He said that on one occasion, McGee had asked him if Maguire would modify the resolution’s language, would that make a difference in garnering the mayor’s support? Hudspeth said he told McGee it wouldn’t matter.

Watts, the former Denton mayor, also said he didn’t meet with McGee.

“I was surprised to see Brandon’s statement that he had talked to me because we had very little conversation about anything during our short term on council,” Watts said Thursday.

In addition, Watts said he was disturbed to read what had happened with McGee’s supporters thinking McGee was going to change his vote. He had heard the crowd outside Tuesday chanting “F--k McGee” and heard what former council member Deb Armintor and others were saying about recalling progressive council members if they voted no.

He said he had learned from reading the Record-Chronicle‘s Wednesday report that McGee had asked a supporter and friend, Keri Caruthers, not to be mad at him for how he planned to vote Tuesday evening.

“As elected officials, our words matter,” Watts said. “To speak with such aggression and anger and challenging and calling out old council members on the issue, and when you say you’re going to vote a certain way … I don’t understand. Nothing against him. I don’t understand, and it really created an environment that put the public and police at risk.”

Here is verbatim what Caruthers said about what McGee had told her shortly before the council meeting began:

“It’s a short story in that before he took his seat on the dais, he came and gave me a hug and whispered to me, something to the effect of ‘no matter how I vote tonight, just know that I love you.’ And I’m like, ‘No matter what?’ And he says, ‘I love you.’ And I was like, ‘Dude, don’t forget all the people who had got you here.’

“Why would you put any doubt with that statement? And that is how it started. I sat there for a couple of minutes and thought, ‘I have to get people on the horn because if I don’t say anything, and he waffles …’ And [so] I texted a friend, and she sent it off, and there you go. And I am nervous about what would have happened if I had not brought it out to somebody.”

McGee said he did speak with Caruthers shortly before he took his seat on the dais. He didn’t explain why he had told Caruthers not to be mad at him for how he would be voting later that evening.

“There are a lot of people who agree with things that I do and a lot of people who disagree with things that I do, and that’s the nature of politics,” he said.