Jackson Jambalaya

Some politicians just can't leave well enough alone.  State Senator Lydia Chassiniol (R-KGB) wants to limit the scope of the Open Meetings Act.  Bryan Stole reported in the Greenwood Commonwealth:


Two bills introduced by state Sen. Lydia Chassaniol would redefine a public meeting, making it easier for government bodies to conduct business in private.

Senate Bills 2352 and 2489, introduced by the Winona Republican, would limit the provisions of the Open Meetings Act to government meetings where a quorum is present.

Government transparency advocates say the proposed changes would undermine important provisions of the act and make it easier for government bodies to avoid public scrutiny.

“You are either opposed to open and honest government, or you’re in favor of it,” said Will Bardwell, a Jackson attorney and president of the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information. “It certainly appears that Sen. Chassaniol has come down on the side opposing open and honest government.”

Chassaniol did not return several phone messages and an email Tuesday seeking comment.

Both bills would redefine a “meeting” under the Open Meetings Act to apply only to those meetings at which at least a quorum of board members is present.

Senate Bill 2489 is even more explicit, specifying that a meeting “does not include serial assemblages of less than a quorum of members.”

The altered language, Bardwell said, would allow boards to hold a series of small meetings where all members of the board are included but during which a quorum is never present at any one time.

Tom Hood, the executive director of the Mississippi Ethics Commission, the body charged with enforcing the Open Meetings Act, said the Ethics Commission and the state’s courts have repeatedly deemed such practices, called a “rolling quorum,” as illegal under the state’s sunshine laws.

Chassaniol’s bills, Hood said, would make it far easier for boards to hold critical discussions or debate public policy without giving members of the public and the press a chance to be present.

Charlie Mitchell, a syndicated columnist and professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi, said the law is clearly targeted at the Ethics Commission’s last three rulings which faulted the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors, the mayor and board of aldermen of Yazoo City, and the Columbus City Council for splitting meetings into groups of less than a quorum to avoid letting the public in.

“The timing of it indicates it is clearly a response to the Ethic Commission’s rulings,” Mitchell said. “The commission says that that’s not what the law means, so the senator apparently wants to change the law.”

Hood said chance encounters and discussions between public officials is permissible under the Open Meetings Act, but that intentionally setting up small meetings to avoid a quorum — as Chassaniol’s bills would allow — could exclude the public from key discussions.

“The effect of that is that when you get to the formal public meeting, there’s not public debate or discussion because the matter has already been decided in private,” Hood said.

Bardwell said that he couldn’t imagine another purpose of Chassaniol’s bills other than to gut what he called a key provision of the Open Meetings Act.

“The whole purpose of the Open Meetings Act is to make sure that the deliberations of public bodies take place publicly. That goal would be squarely undercut by Sen. Chassaniol’s bill,” Bardwell said. “All deliberations regarding public policy are supposed to take place publicly. I don’t know why Sen. Chassaniol thinks that’s such a bad thing. It’s an election year, and Sen. Chassaniol owes it to her constituents to explain her stance.”