A judge says the city of Columbus can’t hold split meetings of its city council to avoid open meetings requirements.
Lowndes County Chancery Judge Kenneth Burns, in a ruling this week, found that gatherings involving two or three council members and Mayor Robert Smith in 2014 violated Mississippi’s Open Meetings Act.
The judge upheld a prior ruling of the Mississippi Ethics Commission. The city had appealed the ruling to Burns, stating that there were no circumstances in which a private meeting with less than a quorum of officials had to be open.
Columbus has a six-member council, requiring four members to be present for business. Nathan Gregory, a Dispatch reporter at the time, filed a complaint to the Ethics Commission in 2014 after a series of closed gatherings of several councilmen and the mayor to discuss economic development and renovations to the Trotter Convention Center. Each time, there were two separate meetings with two or three council members apiece.
The city argued that the meetings were “gatherings” in order to share information that would later be presented to the council at a public meeting. Since the gatherings were not “meetings” as defined by the Open Meetings Act, the public could be excluded, the city argued.
But Burns said the mayor and council’s practice, with pre-arranged meetings, was deliberately structuring meetings to discuss public business in private.
“Significant to the court is that the city admits that the mayor and other officials met with a quorum of the council on the days in question but divided into groups with less than a quorum of the council so the public could be excluded,” the judge wrote.
Burns quoted a 1985 state Supreme Court case that barred certain closed meetings then being held by the state College Board.
“All the deliberative stages of the decision-making process that lead to ‘formation and determination of public policy’ are required to be open to the public.”
Jeff Turnage, the city’s attorney, said he understands the importance of openness in public discourse but he is afraid the mayor and councilmen will be “muzzled” between meetings.
Turnage added that he thought the decision muddies the question of what communication, if any, public officials can have outside a public meeting.
“If we follow this ruling to its logical end, the mayor and members of the council will be muzzled between meetings because otherwise they’re in jeopardy of a fine,” Turnage said in a statement. “That cannot be how the Legislature intended the Open Meetings Act to work, and it flies in the face of the plain language of the Open Meetings Act.”
Joe Dillon, the city’s spokesperson, said Turnage and councilmen will now decide if they want to appeal Burns’ ruling. Any appeal, at this point, would go to the state Supreme Court.
Tom Hood, the executive director of the Ethics Commission, said he was pleased that the Chancery Court affirmed the commission’s ruling.
“We hope that public boards all around the state will follow the commission’s ruling in this case,” he said.
Gregory no longer works for The Dispatch. The paper has asked Burns to allow it to take Gregory’s place in the litigation.
“Since filing the original complaint with the Ethics Commission, we have felt these meetings were held in violation of the state’s Open Meetings Act,” Peter Imes, general manager of The Dispatch, said on Thursday. “We’re glad the courts thus far have agreed.”
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