The foul smell of sunshine law violations

The city council in one Missouri community needs to hold a closed meeting for litigation
purposes. It wants to meet with its lawyers to discuss settlement of an employment matter.
That’s understandable. But wait… It wants to bring into that closed meeting the lawyers for the
other side. So that all the parties can discuss settlement of this in secret.

What strategizing can you see in that scenario? The body and its lawyers can hardly discuss
their strategy for handling this case with the other side sitting in the same room, can they?
Nope. In fact, the only folks who won’t know their strategy for settlement is, guess who? You
know the answer. It’s you and me, the taxpayer.

But wait …. there’s more. They need a quorum to vote on going into closed session. They need a
quorum to vote on approving any settlement. And one of the members of the body needed to
make a quorum is, you guessed it, a relative of the person about whom settlement is being
discussed.

Can the board member vote to approve any settlement? Hardly, one would think. Can the board
member even cast a vote on going into closed session to discuss the settlement?

I bet you can smell this one even over the internet.