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Home > Blogs > West Chester News and Issues > Archives > 2009 > April > 17 > Entry
Questions about Sunshine Law
I’ve received a few responses to this story that ran earlier this week regarding Liberty Twp.’s proposal to change the name of Hamilton-Mason Road to Liberty Way, which would provide them a namesake off Interstate 75.
The story talks about West Chester Twp. Trustee Lee Wong’s opposition to the proposal for two reasons: He believes residents and businesses along Hamilton-Mason have not been informed about the possible change, and he thinks the discussion thus far has been below board, and purposefully kept out of the public eye.
In response to his statements Tuesday, April 14, West Chester Twp. Administrator Judi Boyko stated she acted in accordance with Ohio law, and that there were no violations of the state’s Sunshine or Open Meetings laws.
The Ohio Attorney General’s Office says this about open meetings:
1. Definition: The Open Meetings Act applies to members of a public body when they are conducting the public’s business, which they must do in the context of an open meeting.38 As stated previously, a “meeting” is (a) a prearranged gathering of (b) a majority of members of a public body (c) for the purpose of discussing public business.39And…
a. Prearranged gathering: The Open Meetings Act addresses prearranged discussions, but does not prohibit impromptu encounters between members of public bodies, such as hallway discussions.40 One court has found that an unsolicited and unexpected e-mail sent from one board member to other board members is clearly not a prearranged meeting;41 nor is a spontaneous one-on one telephone conversation between two board members.42And…
In evaluating whether particular gatherings of public officials constituted “meetings,” several courts have opined that the Open Meetings Act is intended to apply to situations where there has been actual formal action taken, such as deliberation upon official business. On the other hand, meetings strictly of an investigative and information-seeking nature that do not involve actual deliberations of public business have been found by some counts not to be “meetings” for purposes of the Open Meetings Act.55And regarding “round-robin calling”:
2) “Round-robin” or “serial” meetings: Some courts have concluded that one-on-one conversations between individual members of a public body, either in person or by telephone, do not violate the Open Meetings Act.49 However, conducting back-to-back discussions of the same public business with less than a majority of members participating in each discussion is viewed as a single meeting attended by a majority of the members. Such “round-robin” or “serial” meetings violate the Open Meetings Act.50
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Comments
By Groucho
April 18, 2009 5:32 AM | Link to this
Dave-can you give the folks in Middletown a call and explain this to them.Specially the part about the round-robin.
By free trials
April 9, 2010 12:11 AM | Link to this
Good points…I would note that as someone who really doesn’t write on blogs much (in fact, this may be my first post), I don’t think the term “lurker” is very becoming to a non-posting reader. It’s not your fault really , but perhaps the blogosphere could come up with a better, non-creepy name for the 90% of us that enjoy reading the posts.
By LeBron James shoes
April 17, 2010 3:27 AM | Link to this
Thank for this great post, i like what you read.