Tell me what would it take to really convince you That I’m gonna love you, even if my heart would break…
Agendas for closed meetings are a frequent topic for discussion on the Missouri Press hotline. After several calls citing agendas that listed every topic for a closed meeting except the kitchen sink, I sent out a call to our MoPress members asking them to send me a sampling of recent closed meeting agenda. They responded, with a vengence! I had (probably still have!) a stack several inches high on my desk. School board agendas, city council agendas, fire district agendas, county legislative agendas… you name it, I had it. (Yes, now that you mention it, I DO think your body’s agendas are in that stack. It was pretty thorough.)
The commonality was that they all included the same five or six reasons for closed meetings: Litigation, real estate, personnel — 1, 2, 3, sometimes 5, 13, and sometimes others under Section 610.021. Week after week, month after month, the same citations were used.
Did they actually TALK about all these things in the closed meetings? Of course not. That would be ridiculous. Bodies just did this so that if someone WANTED to talk about that in the closed meeting, they’d have listed it and therefore would have a reason to claim the discussion which wasn’t planned was NOT a violation of the law. See how smart someone was to think this up? No need for forethought. No need for planning. Just go into closed meeting and wander wherever you wanted — you’d be covered and no one would break the law. (Well, of course, unless you started talking about a topic that is NOT permitted in a closed session. But that NEVER happens. No, of course it doesn’t. Why, that would be illegal. Yes, of course.)
It was, of course, eye-opening to see all those agendas. All those public bodies who did not read the law when it talks about citing the specific exceptions giving rise to the closed meeting. Surely the language in Section 610.022 that talks about “the specific reason for closing that public meeting or vote by reference to a (that’s “a” and not “all the”) specific section of this chapter…” doesn’t mean what those words say, does it?
Well, I don’t expect the world to take what I say as the Law. I’m just one attorney. There are many attorneys with their own opinions. Perhaps, thought, it’s of more interest when the one attorney with an opinion is the Missouri Attorney General. Now, General Koster issues his opinions several ways. The formal way is through AG opinions. He’s issued a large number of those in 2011, almost all of which deal with initiative petitions. Clearly, his staff has been distracted by those pesky petitions this year.
But recently he issued another, lesser-known opinion, in a letter to the City of Louisiana, Mo.’s city council and Mayor. Well, it’s his informal opinion, signed by one of his staff members. It’s not an Official AG opinion, but it’s still pretty darned interesting. You cannot find it on the Internet easily, so I’ve made your life easy and put it here: Download AG Letter 2011 on closed agenda
Maybe someone will listen to our state’s Attorney General when he says this. Maybe public bodies will start only listing the reasons they REALLY are holding a closed meeting, and will better plan what discussions will take place in closed meetings. It’s always better for a public body to decide to clean up its act and follow the language in the law then to subject the public to paying for litigation just because someone on the public body wants to do it the “easy” way.
Listen to your Mother. She no doubt told you that doing it the “easy” way was not acceptable. She was right. Do it right the first time. Don’t cut corners. It’ll keep you out of a “heap” of trouble in the long-run.