Opening up
about open meetings

Investigation of the illegal raid on our newsroom and two homes isn’t the only thing the state has been dragging its feet on.

The attorney general’s office notified us last week — a year after our initial complaint — that it still was investigating whether Marion City Council members violated the Open Meetings Act in July of last year.

The complaint involves council members continuing to discuss city business after adjourning a council meeting. Members of the public already had left, and recordings already had ceased when a group of council members began discussing a $15,000 settlement the city’s insurance company had made.

The settlement was in a lawsuit filed over a suicide at county jail of a mentally disturbed woman police had arrested. The city administrator and two of four council members present had never been told about the settlement and wanted details.

The administrator at the time found no problem with council members discussing city business outside of public view because, he said, no action was taken.

He was right that actions cannot be taken except during official meetings, but the Open Meetings Act forbids any gatherings of officials outside of public view except in limited circumstances in which an executive session is called within a meeting.

The situation is what led city staff to begin including on agendas for future meetings a note stating: “It is possible that sometime between 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. immediately prior to this meeting, during breaks, and directly after the meeting, a majority of the governing body may be present in the commission chambers or lobby of city hall. No one is excluded from these areas during those times.”

This warning doesn’t seem to address the Open Meetings Act requirement that city business be discussed during scheduled, open sessions.

We have no idea why it has taken the attorney general’s office so long to investigate the matter. Perhaps its attorneys were too busy suing the federal government over transgender abortion doctors crossing the border to stuff ballot boxes or some such thing.

What we do know is that keeping citizens and elected officials in the dark about what the city is doing is a troubling trend that seems to continue to this day.

Bureaucrats or autocrats still appear to be making most of the important decisions regarding what the city is doing, leaving the elected council to deal only with a limited agenda of items it then talks to death.

— ERIC MEYER