Wednesday, March 5, 2008

State must force the public?s business out of the backroom


When Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden sued the Ada County Commissioners for violating the Idaho Open Meeting Act in 2005, it should have been an open-and-shut case—with the commissioners the losers.

The law reads, "Any member of the governing body governed by the provisions of sections 67-2340 through 67-2346, Idaho Code, who knowingly conducts or participates in a meeting which violates the provisions of this act shall be subject to a fine not to exceed one hundred fifty dollars ($150) for a first violation and not to exceed three hundred dollars ($300) for each subsequent violation as a civil penalty."

However, the Idaho Supreme Court parsed the meaning of the word "knowingly" and gutted the law.

It left the burden on the public to plumb the minds of public officials to find out if they "knowingly" violate the open meeting law. It threw the law out the window for public officials who claim ignorance.

This is the point made by Wasden's representative who called to complain about an Express editorial that criticized the attorney general for delivering a mere slap on the wrist to the Idaho Board of Education recently for deliberating behind closed doors in December on canceling Idaho Standards Achievement Tests.

An investigation conducted by Wasden's office concluded that the board's members had not violated the open meeting law because their actions may have been a "non-knowing violation."

Wasden applied the high court's May 2007 decision in the Ada County case to the letter. His office determined that the Board of Education didn't knowingly violate the law when board members discussed the ISATs. Remarkably, a deputy attorney general present at the meeting didn't indicate a problem existed either.

Turns out that the board also didn't know that its executive director was going to issue a press release a few days later announcing cancellation of ISATs for ninth-graders. The director claimed the cancellation was his sole decision.

From the outside, it looked as though the board had made a decision in secret that was announced to the public later.

That's the problem with closed meetings. They make it impossible for the public to figure out what's going on with the public's business. The public is unable to watchdog how its own money is spent.

The Open Meeting Act "declares that it is the policy of this state that the formation of public policy is public business and shall not be conducted in secret."

The state's policy is now in conflict with the law as it's written.

Idaho must move quickly to put teeth back into the law and force the public's business out of the backroom and into the open.




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