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Quick Review: Who Board Members Can Talk To and When (Part 3) (Revised December 2022) OIP often is asked whether board members can talk to one another in various situations when not in a meeting. To help board members understand what they can talk about when they are not in a meeting, OIP put together a three-part Quick Review. The entire series can be found online on OIP's Sunshine Law training webpage at oip.hawaii.gov. Boards subject to the Sunshine Law, Part I of Chapter 92, Hawaii Revised Statutes (HRS), are generally required to conduct all business in open meetings that have been properly noticed to allow for public participation. This Quick Review discusses an exception to the open meeting requirement for "permitted interaction groups" or "PIGs," as set forth in section 92-2.5(b), HRS. While other types of permitted interactions were previously discussed in Part 2 of this Quick Review series, this article explains how members of a board may form a PIG to investigate or to negotiate a matter. PIGs Established to Investigate Two or more members of a board, but less than the number of members which would constitute a quorum, may be assigned to investigate a matter relating to the official business of their board. In order for a board to take action on a matter investigated by a PIG, three separate board meetings must occur in the order described below. At the FIRST meeting of the full board, the investigative PIG is formed and the scope of the investigation and the scope of each member's authority are defined. No new members or issues can be added to the PIG after the first board meeting. The PIG may then conduct its investigation outside of open meetings, which may take months to complete. At a SECOND meeting of the full board, the findings and recommendations of the PIG are presented to the board, but the board cannot discuss or act on the report at this meeting. A PIG may present its findings to the full board in an executive session if the reason for entering into the executive meeting is one of those set forth in section 92-5(a), HRS, or other law. For example, if a PIG was created to investigate whether to take certain disciplinary action against an employee, it may present its findings to the full board in accordance with section 92-5(a)(2), HRS, which allows boards to enter executive meetings to consider the discipline of an employee. In such a situation, OIP generally recommends Quick Review: Who Board Members Can Talk To and When Part 3 (Dec. 2022) Nee 1