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Newspaper Clipping - Newspaper Clipping Scan - Open-meeting law applies only with quorum, court rules - 7/15/1983MeetingsContinued from page 1A report April 26, 1982, and the next day, the board publicly read the con- clusions and voted to reopen Arm- strong High School in Plymouth and Cooper High School in New Hope. The protesting parents argued that board members' private discussions violated the open -meeting law; that the manner in which the panel and its recommendations had been used violated notice and hearing require- ments of the state's Schoolhouse Closing Statute, and that because of the violations, the board's decision should be invalidated. The trial court agreed with the par- ents' allegations about the open - meeting law — it found 14 violations and fined each of the six people then on the board $100 — but it refused to invalidate the decision. Moberg and Robb appealed, asking not only that the decision be invali- dated but that the board members be fined differently and removed from office. The open -meeting issue was addressed at its extremes in two pre- vious cases, the court said; in the first case, the court decided that "any 'scheduled' gathering of all members of a governing body must be noticed and open." In the second case, the court held that "a discus- sion between two members of a gov- erning body about a matter pending before the body is not a per se viola- tion of the statute." After those two decisions, Chief Jus- tice Douglas Amdahl wrote in to- day's decision, the court still had to "determine whether the law applies to discussions between any specific proportion of a public body less than the whole, but greater than two members." District 281 board mem- bers had talked a number of times in attempts to persuade one another to change their votes and break the deadlock, and a board member had written to three others to express vie,vs she said she'd been reluctant to explain fully in public. The court said the law was "enacted to prevent public bodies from dis- solving into executive session on im- portant but controversial matters, and to ensure that the public has an opportunity both to detect improper influences and to present its views. "Proceedings of the respective legis- lative committees (that acted on the law) also indicate that the law was not intended to apply to informal discussions among a few colleagues, or to groups too small to effect a decision on public business," the court said. It added: "There is a point beyond which open discussion requirements may serve to immobilize a body and prevent the resolution of important problems." In the Robbinsdale case, "it appears that the private discus- sions were conducted for the pur- pose of breaking the deadlock rather than for achieving some secret in- tended result." The court said that, "in formulating a definition of 'meetings' that must be open, the public's right to know must be balanced against the pub- lic's right to the effective and effi- cient administration of public bodies. "It is the duty of public officials to persuade each other in an attempt to resolve issues, and it makes little sense to suggest that they may listen to a group of nonmembers on impor- tant matters but not to their col- leagues, who may be more expert on the subject than any other persons." Such discussion becomes improper "when designed to avoid public dis- cussion altogether, to forge a major- ity in advance of public hearings on an issue or to hide improper influ- ences such as the personal or pecuni- ary interest of a public official," the court said. In response to the claim that serial conversations could be used to mar- shal votes before an issue is raised at a public hearing, the court said: "It does not follow that two- or three- person conversations should be pro- hibited, however, because officials who are determined to act furtively will hold such discussions anyway, or might simply use an outsider as an intermediary. There is a way to ille- gally circumvent any rule that the court might fashion, and therefore it is important that the rule not be so restrictive as to lose the public bene- fit of personal discussion between public officials while gaining little assurance of openness." In the Robbinsdale case, the court found no violations; only one identi- fied by the trial court involved a quorum. It was a gathering in the superintendent's office before a board meeting at which the superin- tendent distributed responses to questions and answers by the fact- finding panel and asked board mem- bers for their reactions individually; there was no discussion between members. Own -meeting law' applies only with quorum, court rules By Neal Gendler Ow'PLs Staff Writer 1--(15-33 The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in a decision to be released today that the state's open -meeting law does not prevent members of public boards from meeting in private if there is not a quorum. The court decided the law applies only to "meetings of at least a quo- rum of a governing body or its subdi- visions at which members receive information regarding, or discuss or decide as a group," any official busi- ness. The court reversed Hennepin County District Judge Robert Schie- felbein's finding that school board members violated the law by holding private discussions before voting to close Robbinsdale High School. The Robbinsdale District 281 School Board was sued last year by Rob- Ansdale parents Keith Moberg and ■ The Minnesota Supreme Court says that the City of St. Paul doesn't have to negotiate with the fire fighters' union to establish a training program for captains, but must negotiate with the union on some aspects of the program. Details on Page 5A. Joy Robb, who claimed that board members violated the open -meeting law during a prolonged deadlock over which of District 281's three high schools should be closed be- cause of decreasing enrollment. During the deadlock, the board vot- ed to close all three high schools and appointed a panel of outsiders to decide which two would meet the long-term needs of the district best. The panel gave board members its Meetings continued on page 5A