Error or arrogance: open meetings violations come in all varieties
COG2
To its great credit, the Nelson County Board of Education recently acknowledged that its failure to observe the requirements for going into closed session at its August 3 meeting violated the open meetings law.
On August 12, the Nelson County Gazette reported that it had filed an open meetings complaint with board chair Diane Breeding in which it alleged that the board’s failure to give public notice of the general nature of the business to be discussed in closed session, the reason for the closed session and the statutory exception authorizing the closed session violated the law. As required by statute, the newspaper proposed several remedies, most of them aimed at improving the board members’ understanding of their legal obligations under the law.
On August 17, the newspaper reported that the board’s attorney admitted that its members “inadvertently failed to follow the proper procedure as prescribed by the Open Meetings Act.” While school board members are afforded ample opportunity to learn -- or to educate themselves -- about the legal requirements for open meetings compliance, mistakes are made. The board’s prompt acknowledgement of error suggests that it was, indeed, inadvertent.
Mistake made and acknowledged. Lesson learned.
Unfortunately, not all public agencies are willing to acknowledge open meetings error. Their “holier than thou” rhetoric suggests that they are entirely incapable of any error.
Witness the Jefferson County Board of Education’s reaction to 17-OMD-161, an open meetings decision issued by the Kentucky Attorney General on August 14 following the submission of an appeal by the Bluegrass Institute Center for Open Government. That appeal focused on the board’s decision to conduct a public meeting in a private law office located on the 28th floor of a downtown Louisville building – on a Sunday afternoon – and alleged that the location was not convenient to the public as required by lawThe attorney general agreed that a private law office was not a place convenient to the public. He observed, “A public meeting must be held in ‘a place from which no part of the citizens … may be excluded by reason of not feeling they may freely attend.’ The standard here is one of reasonableness. In this case, the Board met in a private law office . . . . [Based on] common experience as well as the specific experience of the [representatives of the Bluegrass Institute] when [unsuccessfully] attempting to access the office of Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs on a Sunday, we believe it reasonable to suppose that an ordinary member of the public might have been discouraged from trying to attend a meeting there.”
Kentucky’s open meetings law requires that public agencies conduct their meetings at times and places convenient to the public. It makes no reference to places designed to minimize agency cost. Most importantly, it makes no reference to the convenience of the public agency.
WDRB reports that in responding to the open meetings decision, the board chair “criticized as ‘ludicrous’ the Bluegrass Institute's claim that it found the doors of PNC Plaza locked when it tried to access the building on Sunday, July 9. ‘The only thing this group has done has guaranteed that any time there is a special meeting, even on weekends, that there will be a cost incurred by the taxpayers of Jefferson County.’
"Mistake made but deflected. Lesson not learned.
Again, we marvel that public officials uniquely positioned to appreciate the value of education refuse to be educated about a law that governs every aspect of their public service. That law obligates the board to consider the right of the public to be informed even at a cost -- albeit a conspicuously unspecified cost -- to the agency whose past spending practices could hardly be described as parsimonious.
Like the Nelson County Board of Education, the Jefferson County Board of Education would do well to prioritize the public’s statutory rights above its own convenience and, yes, unspecified costs.