Record closed meetings
Issue: Officials in some Utah cities and counties are dismayed - they close a meeting under the Open Meetings Law only to see complaints by news reporters and/or public interest groups claiming they violated the law. The law needs to be more clearly defined.History: A number of smaller cities and towns, who don't have an attorney at all of their meetings, have over the years closed public meetings. Media groups or others sue, and find that matters other than those allowed under the Open Meetings Law were discussed and that accurate minutes of the closed meetings weren't kept.
Action: The House passed modifications to the Open Meetings Act on Thursday after several years of compromise by various groups.
Pros and cons: The new bill says detailed written minutes of closed meetings must be kept or the meeting tape recorded. If someone thinks the meeting was closed illegally, a case is brought in court and the judge reads/listens to the minutes and decides if there's been a violation. If the judge rules there has been a violation, the minutes will be made public and the public body will take up the matter at its next public meeting to vote in public what it did in private.
"Some of us are concerned that we in the Legislature exempt ourselves from (some) of the provisions of the Open Meetings Act, specifically our rules committees and caucuses," said House Assistant Minority Whip Grant Protzman, D-North Ogden. But, said Protzman, he hopes that those meetings can be opened next year.
House Majority Leader Marty Stephens, R-Farr West, worked out the complicated compromises between cities, counties, Utah Common Cause and the Society of Professional Journalists that made the bill possible.