AG: Vague agenda items don’t cut it under Sunshine Law

By Jennifer Peebles | Monday, October 20th, 2008

Here’s a novel concept: Government meeting agendas that actually tell you what’s going to be talked about. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says that’s how governments need to be writing their agendas, or they could be breaking the state’s sunshine law, according to this morning’s Dallas Morning News.

From the story by Jon Nielsen:

The opinion states that posting vague items on a government body’s agenda such as “superintendent’s report,” “mayor’s update” or “council and other reports” without detailing the topics to be discussed in those reports doesn’t adequately inform the public.

Dave LaBrec, a governmental law attorney for the Dallas firm Strasburger and Price, said the opinion is a win for open government advocates.

“It doesn’t matter if you are taking action [on an item],” Mr. LaBrec said. “The criteria is, the public’s got a right to know.”

My own personal favorites are the standbys of “old business” and “new business.”

The opinion in question arose from the agenda of the Corpus Christi City Council. State Sen. Jeff Wentworth, chairman of the Senate Jurisprudence Committee, had asked Abbott for an opinion on the issue back in April.

Wentworth’s letter gave some examples of vague descriptions that had appeared on Corpus City Council agendas in recent months, and then, using minutes of those meetings, listed some of the specific items that were discussed at those same meetings — some of which the general public might have wanted to have known about, including the city’s plan to refinance bonds, a city audit on building fees, and the city’s request for state help in investigating a wreck that had killed a city police officer.

Abbott’s summary:

The notice at issue does not sufficiently notify a reader, as a member of the interested public, of the subjects to be addressed at a meeting subject to the Open Meetings Act, Government Code chapter 551.

Section 551.042 of the Act authorizes a limited response to inquiries of a member of the public or of the governmental body about a subject not included in the posted notice. To the extent that a subject is addressed by a city manager or a member of the governing body in the manner and under the circumstances authorized under section 551.042, it does not have to be included in a posted meeting notice.

You can read the entire opinion here on the AG’s Web site.