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Monday, January 02, 2006

Ind. Gov't. - Legislature will again be asked to ban serial meetings

The Evansville Courier& Press has an editorial today endorsing Sen. Bev Gard's reintroduction of her failed proposal from last session:

Advocates for truly open government in Indiana will try again during the upcoming legislative session to ban "serial meetings" by government boards.

The serial meeting is a tactic that government boards use to avoid public scrutiny in conducting the public's business. It is patently wrong, and is in violation of the spirit of Indiana's open-meetings law. Sen. Beverly Gard, R-Greenfield, would make it a violation of the word of the law with her Senate Bill 89. * * *

By failing to make such meetings illegal, here's the type of activity the Legislature permits: On a nine-member public board, for example, administrators may hold three closed, unannounced meetings, each with three members of the board, each not a quorum, to discuss public business. Then, when the board meets in public with all members present, it votes without comment on whatever issue was discussed in private. But the public gets no discussion and no insight into the deliberations of board members.

If you ever see a public board decide an important issue with no discussion, it is fair to wonder whether that group of public officials is utilizing serial meetings.

Senator Gard's 2005 proposal, SB 310, received much editorial endorsement, as indicated in this Feb. 2, 2005 ILB entry ("Editorials laud Senator Gard's open meetings bill"), citing editorials from four major state papers, and this one from March 14th, 2005. This entry from April 17, 2005, discusses (at the end) the demise of Gard's 2005 effort.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 2, 2006 07:14 AM
Posted to Indiana Government