Wake up and smell the roses!

    An owner of a weekly paper is also the secretary for a small public body that recently met in a closed meeting.  In that meeting, the discussion “wandered,” as such discussions are (illegally) want to do, and soon members were discussing a subject that was beyond the scope of the reason for the closing — namely whether to give all employees a cost of living raise.

    The scribe, in preparing the minutes for release, asked the clerk to add those latter minutes to the open meeting minutes.  I give credit that at least here is one member who is sensitive to the fact that this part of the closed meeting was wrong and needed to be corrected.

    But this doesn’t absolve the body’s members from the fact that the discussion was illegal.  One would think anyone who stays up on the body’s actions in open meeting would wonder how they slept through this discussion in an open meeting.  Moving the minutes from the closed meeting to the open meeting doesn’t absolve the body’s members from the fact that they acted illegally in having the discussion in the closed meeting.

    Speaking of sleeping, I can only guess that is what this body’s members were doing when they last attended a seminar on the sunshine law.  They certainly need to wake up and get their act together before they find someone in the crowd giving them a rude awakening!