By Jennifer Jacob Brown / jbrown@themeridianstar.com
The Meridian Star
MERIDIAN — Last week, the Mississippi House passed a bill originally designed to give some teeth to the state's ill-enforced Open Meetings law — but that bill likely won't make it through the week.
Mississippi's Open Meetings law dictates that any public governing body —such as a city council or school board — must conduct all of their business in public. There are a few exceptions that allow a body to discuss something in an closed meeting, and those exceptions are all spelled out in the state law.
Currently, if members of a governing body break that law, either by holding closed meetings to discuss things that aren't listed as exceptions or by holding illicit meetings, there's not much that can be done to hold them accountable.
If a public official is found by the state's ethics commission to have broken the open meetings law, the commission can charge a fine of $100 — but not to the public official that broke the law. It's the governing body — and eventually the taxpayer — who gets slapped with that fine.
The bill, Senate Bill 2373, that would toughen the enforcement of the state's open meetings law has gone through quite a few transformations since it was originally drafted.
The original Senate version of the bill would have increased the fines for breaking open meetings laws, would have made that fine payable by the person who broke the open meetings law rather than by the taxpayer, and would have given the ethics commission or a chancery judge power to nullify any decisions made by a governing body during an illegal meeting.
The version of the bill presented to the House by the House Judiciary A Committee kept the increased fines, but removed the power of the ethics commission to repeal decisions and put the cost of the fine back on the taxpayer.
When the bill made it to the House floor, State Rep. Greg Snowden (R-Meridian) offered an amendment to put the fine back on the individual officials that break the open meetings law.
The bill, with the amendment, passed the House with a large majority, but State Rep. Ed Blackmon (D-Canton), the chairman of the Judiciary A Committee, held the bill on a motion to reconsider.
Simply put, that means Blackmon has the power to kill the bill or not to kill it, Snowden said. To keep the bill from dying, he said, Blackmon would have to either call a vote to reconsider or table the motion to reconsider. Today is the deadline to reconsider, and Friday is the deadline to table the motion, Snowden said.
"I think he fully intends to allow the bill to die," said Snowden. "It's his prerogative as chairman to kill the bill because it didn't come out the way he wanted it to. That's just the way it works."
Blackmon spoke out in the House against placing fines for open meetings law violations on the individuals who break the law. He said that some elected officials in smaller communities are paid little and may not have access to legal advice. This, he said, would make it unfair to place fines upon them, since their lack of legal advice may cause them to break the open meetings law without realizing it.
But Snowden said the fines would only apply to those who are "willfully and deliberately in violation" of the law.
Lauderdale County Administrator Mike Sumrall, for one, said he is on the fence about the bill itself, but tends to agree with Blackmon on the unfairness of fining the individual violators of the open meetings law.
"It would probably have more teeth if it did fine the public officials instead of the public entity," Sumrall said. "But there are a lot of boards, smaller boards around the state like school boards, that don't get reimbursed very much."
"I'm all for open meetings and there is certainly need for open meetings law," he added. "But you can get yourself in trouble not intending to — trying to do the right thing, but it doesn't always end up being the right thing."
Some state officials, however, disagree and say that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
But Sumrall said smaller boards that may not have legal counsel at their meetings could easily call an illegal closed session without realizing it because there is no one there to advise them that it is illegal.
Meridian City Councilman Dr. George Thomas said it's a matter of responsibility.
"How much you get paid should not determine whether or not you obey the law," he said. "People need to be held responsible for their actions and not expect other people to be responsible for their actions."
Thomas said he agrees with Sumrall on one thing — that some public officials may be unclear on what is allowed to be discussed in closed session under state law. However, he said those people should be responsible for determining what is allowed before calling a closed session.
Thomas said the possibility of being faced with a fine would ensure that public officials make sure a meeting is legal before they hold it.
Snowden's sentiment was similar. He said the current law doesn't provide public bodies with any incentive, other than fear of public disapproval, to conduct their meetings in accordance with the law.
"We don't want to fine people," he said. "We want to deter them from breaking the law in the first place."
