The Jordan School District broke the law when it held a series of closed-door meetings to discuss security issues inside schools that evolved into talks about policy and budgets.
The Utah Attorney General's Office announced its findings Thursday after reviewing the records that it also had to fight the district to get. The entire battle was launched after a complaint by the Deseret Morning News.
"We concluded that it went well beyond what the open meetings act allows meetings to be closed for," said Assistant Utah Attorney General Sheila Page. "The issue was deployment of security personnel. We felt the meetings went beyond deployment and into issues of policy and budget."
While the Utah Attorney General's Office said the school board violated Utah's Open and Public Meetings Act, the Jordan School District still disagrees. It said as much in a joint statement released by the two agencies on Thursday.
"Although the Board of Education and its legal counsel respectfully disagrees with the determination of the Attorney General's Office, in the spirit of continued cooperation, the Board of Education will voluntarily and immediately make public the closed-session audio records in question," it said.
Jordan School District officials refused to comment beyond the district's statement Thursday.
The legal tug-of-war between the Attorney General's Office and the school board was launched by a complaint filed by the Deseret Morning News. In September 2006, the board began discussing whether to continue fi- nancing school resource officers or look at other options, such as hiring private security.
In October and November, the board held a pair of meetings behind closed doors. The Deseret Morning News protested the decision and ultimately complained to the Utah Attorney General's Office, which attempted to investigate. On two separate occasions, the board rejected the attorney general's efforts.
The Utah Attorney General's Office then threatened to sue the Jordan School District after it refused to give up the information. The minutes were handed over after yet another closed-door meeting about litigation in January.
Reviewing the tapes and minutes, Page said the Jordan School Board went beyond the scope of the open and public meetings act. However, the attorney general does not consider it a criminal matter.
"When you have people working for the public and they are relying on their attorney's advice to do certain things, that really doesn't equate to a criminal action," she said. "I don't think there was any intent to commit a crime."
The case will now be closed and audio recordings of the meetings will be given to the newspaper.
Deseret Morning News legal counsel Jeff Hunt called the decision a victory for open government and the public.
"It's a victory for members of the district who want to find out what's going on in their schools," he said.
However, Hunt said he is troubled that the district has not shown any change of heart — at least not in its public statements.
"That's not an encouraging statement," he said Thursday, "because we could just be back right where we were."
Page said it appears the district has learned a lesson.
"We're hoping that everyone has come away from this with the understanding that the open public meetings act needs to be strictly complied with," she said. "The public's business needs to be done in public."
E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com