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Sunday, April 17, 2005

Ind. Gov't. - Open Door experts question whether officials retreating from law

"Open Door experts question whether officials retreating from law" is the headline to a story in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette today. Some quotes:

Retreats are treated like any other public meeting under the Indiana Open Door Law. Publicly funded boards, commissions and councils must post a notice of a retreat 48 hours before it is held, even if it is in another state.

“The reason why it needs to be dealt with is because we are now in an atmosphere in which government is increasingly shutting out people,” says Ray Moscowitz, a 35-year newspaper veteran and retired editorial director for Nixon Newspapers. “This is an issue in which civil servants forget that they are supposed to be serving the citizenry, the people who pay their salaries.”

Indianapolis attorney Richard Cardwell, chief architect of the Indiana Open Door Law and former counsel for the Hoosier State Press Association, says getting any kind of revision through the Indiana General Assembly will be a tough sell.

“You’re dealing with people, almost all of which have been in local government or been attorneys for local government,” he said. “It’s a political process that’s very difficult to get what you can reasonably expect out of them.”

Although Cardwell says teleconferencing or access via Web cams would allow public access, McCall says it does not present the best situation for conducting a public meeting or understanding what goes on in one for the participants or the observers.

“As a communication professor, I can tell you that people don’t interact the same over the phone as they do in person,” McCall said.

Karen Davis, the state public access counselor, says the word “retreat” is not mentioned in the Indiana Open Door Law, but retreat meetings are like any other – they must be classified as executive sessions or have an agenda the public can see with minutes they examine. They also must be able to attend it, regardless of whether it is held in San Pierre in northern Indiana, San Antonio or San Francisco.

“It’s obvious when it’s out of state that it would create barriers to the board’s business,” Davis says.

Davis, like Cardwell, sees more opportunities for abuse with Indiana retreats than those in other states.

Steve Key, counsel for the Hoosier State Press Association, says retreats are not by nature executive sessions – even if, like an executive session, the public and media are not in attendance.

“Just because you call something a retreat, a work session or whatever – just because you put a label on it other than a meeting doesn’t take it out of the scope of a meeting or the Open Door Law,” Key said.

And what has happened with Senator Gard's Senate Bill 310, last discussed in the ILB in this March 14th ILB entry? Ther bill, which would ban "serial" meetings and forbid votes on public business by telephone and over the Internet, was lauded in a number of editorials, including those mentioned in this Feb. 2 ILB entry. Senate Bill 310 died in the House Committee on Local Government.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 17, 2005 05:19 PM
Posted to Indiana Government