He rocks in the tree tops all day long, Hoppin’ and a-boppin’ and singing his song; All the little birdies on jaybird street, Love to hear the robin go tweet tweet tweet!

   Electronic communication by cell phone has been the “hot  news” over the last few days.   Down in the Ozarks, where I’m from, being “all atwitter” has a completely different meaning than perhaps Rep. Weiner might have understood it to be recently.  Well, on second thought, perhaps he might have understood it more than one might think — he certainly seemed excited over some matter….

    Let’s leave it at that.

    But I think public bodies who meet and, at the same time, have members texting one another during business discussions are teetering on a razor-sharp precipice.  I’ve been hearing about school board members doing that in open meetings.  I guess that presents two entirely separate levels of discussion of public business — the one in that is done vocally that attendees can hear, and the private one done from cell phone to cell phone that no member of the public can attend.

    How is that different than electronic emails sent from a private account to a quorum of a public governmental body?  if these text messages go to one member from another, that probably cannot be considered to fall under the sunshine law. (Unless they are being sent around, one by one, until a quorum of the body has received the same message — if that’s the case, then I think we’ve got what Jay Nixon once called a “wagon-wheel meeting.”)  But if the same text is sent from one member to several members, then I think that member had better send a copy to the custodian of records for that body.  That would seem to fall squarely within the language already contained within Section 610.025.

    I’m just sayin’…. and I’m NOT going to address anything further about the body of the members…