Elected officials and members of other public bodies have to walk a fine line when it comes to following the letter of the laws designed to give the public a window into what their government is doing.
Arizona has an open meeting law that spells out what officials can and can’t do when it comes to making sure all public business is conducted in front of the public they serve.
There can still end up being a bit of a gray area, however, explained Kathryn Marquiot, an attorney who works with the Arizona’s Ombudsman-Citizen’s Aide Office, an agency that works to make local governments as open as possible.
Marquiot was in Camp Verde Friday, Nov. 13, speaking to a full house at Town Hall about the ins-and-outs of the state’s open meeting law.
The event was organized by the Verde Natural Resource Conservation District.
“It’s because we needed to be re-upped on the details of the law,” District Chairman Jodi Allen said.
Allen’s group wasn’t the only public body that took advantage of refresher course.
Members of several public bodies were there, including a couple of Camp Verde’s elected leaders.
Marquiot said her office doesn’t technically have any sort of enforcement authority.
“We can give you some very persuasive arguments, however,” Marquiot said.
The primary purpose of the open meeting law is to provide maximum public access to the government process and to keep governments from making decisions in secret.
To that end, Marquiot said that the rules are rather strict when it comes to only talking about things that a government body has informed the public it was going to be talking about ahead of time.
Those items are on a public body’s published agenda, which is required to be posted online and in a physical location at least 24 hours before a meeting.
Exceptions can be made if a legitimate emergency requires a government body to meet as soon as possible.
“For example, if a water main breaks and there needs to be an emergency meeting to fund repairs,” Marquiot said.
For some small communities, Marquiot said the League of Arizona Cities and Towns provides space online where agendas can be posted.
Governments should take care to protect the physical copy of the agenda after it’s posted, Marquiot said.
That’s because if the physical copy is ripped down or removed by someone, nothing the public body does in the planned meeting is valid.
It’s also why elected leaders can’t directly respond to some public questions during a meeting if the item was not already placed on an agenda that was made publicly available.
In another effort to keep the government process open, a quorum of elected leaders aren’t allowed to talk about public business outside of an officially agendized meeting.
A quorum is the minimum number of officials required to vote on decisions.
For Camp Verde’s seven-member Town Council, four members make up a quorum.
That means they have to be careful when attending some events where a quorum might be present, something not particularly uncommon in a small town.
“The public hates to see a quorum out and about,” Marquiot said.
The public also hates to see executive session where certain things are discussed behind closed doors, Marquiot said, but sometimes it is necessary to preserve things like attorney-client privilege, for instance.
Marquiot said officials should also be care when it comes to what they are discussing in emails and who they copy on the discussion.
Often, a government will send out a public notice if a quorum is expected to be in attendance at a given event.
Passing notes and whispering to other members of the government body is “asking for trouble,” Marquiot said.
Marquiot said that ultimately, the public doesn’t really have a lot of rights when it comes to public meetings.
“They have the right to attend, listen and to record it,” Marquiot said. “They do not have the right to participate, no right to speak or disrupt it.”
That being said, Marquiot recommends that public bodies treat everyone equally.
Many government organizations give the public a chance to speak, but if the discussion is not on the agenda, all an elected official can do is to ask to have the topic placed on a future agenda.
If an official is directly criticized, they have the right to respond, however.
