Twice in recent weeks I’ve heard public officials in Marion County misstate the law for keeping meetings open to the public. They’ve said it would be illegal for them to discuss things like personnel matters in open session.
However, that’s not what the Mississippi Open Meetings Act says. Rather it allows for exemptions to the general policy that the people of the state are allowed to be there when their business is discussed, but it does not require that meetings be closed for those reasons just because an exemption exists.
“An executive session shall be limited to matters allowed to be exempted from open meetings by subsection (4) of this section. The reason for holding such an executive session shall be stated in open meeting, and the reason so stated shall be recorded in the minutes of the meeting. Nothing in this section shall be construed to require that any meeting be closed to the public (emphasis mine),” the Open Meetings Act states.
In other words, public officials have the option of closing meetings for certain reasons, but just because they can doesn’t mean they have to.
Another misconception: The most common reason for closing a meeting, in my experience, is for “personnel matters.” While that is a category that is exempt, it requires more specific reasons. Otherwise, a public body could construe just about anything to be related to “personnel matters” because everything they do has something to do with a public employee and thus is a “personnel matter.”
What the law says is that a public body “may” hold an executive session for “transaction of business and discussion of personnel matters relating to the job performance, character, professional competence, or physical or mental health of a person holding a specific position.”
In layman’s terms, they generally need to be discussing something that would be harmful to an employee’s reputation for the meeting to be closed for personnel matters.
Columbia City Attorney Lawrence Hahn is always careful to specifically state one of those categories of personnel exemption when the Board of Aldermen closes a meeting. I appreciate that attention to detail.
But I think generally it would be better public policy to discuss most of those things in open session, though. Take, for example, the recent decision by the city to fire Assistant Police Chief Rita Pickering. Aldermen met in closed session to discuss the matter, which it had a right to do but was not required to do, and officials declined to talk about it after announcing their decision upon reopening the meeting.
Because city officials did not publicly state a reason, it has led to rampant speculation in the community about why. I’ve had countless people ask me, and I don’t know either.
Stating a reason, even briefly, would have been preferable, I think, to creating an information vacuum where rumors get started.
Perhaps city officials were afraid of getting sued, and they were following the general course that most public bodies in Missisippi do when it comes to controversial employment-related matters.
However, I look at it this way: If the owner of a private company wants to know why a manager fired one of his employees, does he have a right to know that? Of course. To deny the owner that right would be a good way for the manager himself to get fired.
In the same way, the public are the owners of the public entities like cities, counties and school districts. They should have the same right to information about their holdings and the conduct of their employees as a private business owner. That’s the intent of the Open Meetings Act.
Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him at (601) 736-2611 or csmith@columbianprogress.com.
