MIN CHC 1989-01-11 - Laserfiche WebLink

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declares that: (1) it is the intent of this part to protect • the people's right to know; (2) the provisions requiring open meetings shall be liberally construed; and (3) the provisions providing for exceptions to the open meeting requirements shall be strictly construed against closed meetings. The definitions are fairly straightforward in this, and you will see from these definitions under the state law that these open meeting provisions apply to this Charter Commission. It states, as used in this part, "board" means any agency, board, commission, authority, or committee of the State or its political subdivisions which is created by constitution, statute, rule, or executive order, to have supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power over specific matters and which is required to conduct meetings and to take official actions. There was a specific attorney general's opinion which stated that even though boards created by charter such as this one are not specifically mentioned that all boards and commissions created by the charters of the various counties would be included under the state Sunshine Law. Clearly, this is a commission which has been given supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power over specific matters and which is required to conduct meetings and take official actions. Under the charter, the definition of the "Charter Commission," under the part of the mandatory review provision, requires this commission to hold meetings and to deliberate and suggest amendments or changes • in the charter that will be passed on eventually to the public through the election process. Further, a "meeting" is defined as the convening of a board for which a quorum is required in order to make a decision or to deliberate toward a decision upon a matter over which the board has supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power. That is part of the Sunshine Law and, therefore, any time you hold a meeting which is to take testimony on possible changes to the charter or to make a decision on whether or not you wish to propose a change to the charter, all of those meetings must be held in public because they are meetings which fall under the definition of meetings under the state Sunshine Law. ROBERT BETHEA: All meetings where you are making a decision? FRED GIANNINI: No, it's all meetings where you are taking testimony or you are deliberating. So, what this is to prevent is, for example, if you had a board or a commission in which there were factions and maybe one faction was made up of 8 people or 9 people and another faction was made up of you know the remainder; and so then if there were some controversial amendement proposed to prevent maybe that majority of people from going off in secret, holding a secret S3