Were the Last Supper held in Nevada, it might violate the state's open meeting law.
Among the nation's nitpickiest public meetings laws, Nevada's statute has produced many violators since its 1960 enactment, ensnaring municipalities and public bodies from the Las Vegas and North Las Vegas city councils to the Public Utilities Commission.
Perennially topping the public offenders' list: the university system's Board of Regents. For decades, this board has collected complaints like J.Lo gathers men, with the latest scrape scoring rebuke from the Attorney General's office and the state Supreme Court for its closed-door-meeting demotions of two top community college officials.
The Regents are only the tip. The AG's office fields a steady stream of open-meeting complaints—60-80 each of the past five years. Reached in Maryland, where he's undergoing Homeland Security training, AG flak Tom Sargent says most public bodies—there are many, ranging in scope from the mighty Regents to the little-known board of Homeopathy—do a fair job of compliance with what he says are basic strictures: No deliberating or voting in private on matters that are expressly public.
"The rules are simple," he says. Still, things get lost in translation. "I don't think there's as much misconception as to what constitutes an open meeting as there is on the details through which and about which open meetings are agendized and disseminated to the public."
Nearly 30 percent of the complaints are proven baseless, most traceable to folks peeved about a decision made by a public body.
Spread the remaining 70 percent of the blame on dickering decision-makers, who try to circumvent the law. The Regents tried in 1995, conducting a vote via fax on whether to censure a colleague. That's heresy to Ann Taylor Schwing, the woman who wrote the Open Meetings Laws, the bible on public meetings. The tome analyzes statutes and cases from all 50 states (its third edition is set for release this year). An attorney with Sacramento-based McDonough, Holland & Allen's, Schwing began studying open-meetings case law in 1993, spurred by her sister's stint on a city council in Alaska. Since then, reams of open-meetings' litigation have been produced, Schwing says, largely because of spurious lawmakers.
"The desire that people have to do things secretly and not to be listened to while they are making the sausage isn't going to change," says Schwing, whose openmeetingslaw.com web site has become popular resource. "The lawsuits pale in comparison to all the violations that occur." (She concedes some of the litigation is baseless. "It's the tail wagging the dog on some of it.")
Basic things the public should know about open meetings laws:
• If it's a public topic it must be addressed in public.
• Most laws designate why a group can go into private sessions—typically to discuss personnel issues.
• Officials should be able to cite a statute or regulation noting the exemptions. "Some states have five, some have 30."
• A person put on the agenda as an item for discussion must be notified and, in some instances, be privy to the talks.
Fallout from the Watergate scandal prompted many states to strengthen their laws, some of which dated to the country's founding. But it's the explosion in the number of public boards and the new issues that continually crop up—are e-mail communiqués or meetings at Starbucks over frappacino OK?—that's put states on the defensive, Schwing says. Lawmakers can't write statutes fast enough to keep pace. "Some states tinker with their laws annually," she says, "California can't leave its laws alone."
Schwing prescribes stricter enforcement. Southern states are particularly aggressive and inclusive—most anyone can file a complaint. "In California, newspapers can't file complaints, but in Kentucky, newspapers can." (Nevada newspapers can, too).
The more people birddog officials, the better, Schwing says. "The public needs to be going to these meetings and objecting, to ensure people are being honest."