Starting with the first constitutional convention in Philadelphia, public officials have been meeting behind closed doors in America.
By the 1960s, however, the public would no longer tolerate "backroom politics" and began demanding that public business be conducted openly.State legislatures responded by passing a variety of open meetings laws. In 1977, Utah passed the Open and Public Meetings Act.
Though the act doesn't require closed meetings, city councils - which are only one public body subject to the act - regularly choose to meet in private, according to a Deseret News study of the 1990 city council minutes of nine cities randomly selected in Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties.
Some cities meet behind closed doors more regularly than others. The Fruit Heights City Council, for example, met in the open 25 times in 1990 but closed portions of those meetings 13 times.
Murray, on the other hand, had no closed city council meetings.
Time spent in closed meetings - which most public officials euphemistically call "executive sessions" - was hard to track because not all the surveyed cities kept a record of it. But of those that did, Fruit Heights
spent the most time - 14 hours - compared with Murray, which spent no time in closed meetings.
The cities also varied widely on how they followed specifics of the law, which require a vote to close a meeting, minutes of the closed meeting and a specific reason for holding a closed meeting. Requirements for minutes of the closed meeting, though not as broad as those of open meetings, are important in case the closed meeting's legality were later to be questioned.
Using the basic requirements of the open meetings act as a measure, the Deseret News "graded" each city on how well it complied with the law. (Please see chart.)
With the exception of Provo, the cities made at least
some effort to comply with the law.
Here's a brief summary of each city: Davis County
In Syracuse, the City Council got high marks for voting properly on its reason to close its seven meetings last year, but scored low marks on minutes for failing to record who was present at the closed meeting.
Fruit Heights voted properly to close its 13 meetings but kept improper minutes and cited unlawful reasons for closing the meeting, such as to discuss the "remodeling of the maintenance shop" and "matters related to staff benefits and wages."
Bountiful scored well in citing legal reasons for closure but got less than perfect marks for failing to record the vote in five of its 20 closed meetings and failing to record who was in attendance at three of them.Salt Lake County
West Valley City complied perfectly with the minimum requirements of the law, although there's no way to verify that what the City Council actually discussed in its eight closed meetings was allowed by law.
Murray held no closed city council meetings, but Mayor Lynn Pett said he and the council, in their capacity as the Redevelopment Agency board, met several times privately to discuss land acquisition.
Midvale scored high in recording a vote and legal reason for each of its five closed meetings but slipped slightly in recording the time and place of at least one closed meeting.Utah County
Pleasant Grove failed twice to record the vote for a closed meeting and failed to record where the closed meetings were held but stated a legal reason for the closure of each of five of its meetings.
Provo failed the tests because no record of closed meetings could be found in the council meeting minutes. When asked about the closed meeting records, the city recorder incorrectly stated that they are not public record.
Springville scored a "B" for failing to state a reason for two of its 13 meetings and failing to record a vote for one of the meetings. The city also failed to record attendance in seven of the meetings while failing to record the time and place in all of the meetings.