The Stillwater school board violated the state’s open meeting law when a fourth board member joined a committee meeting in August, according to an advisory opinion issued Friday.
Carl Blondin, a local attorney, requested the opinion from the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Administration after attending the Aug. 29 meeting of the board’s finance and operations working group.
He said four of the seven elected board members were present and discussed matters of public concern. The public notice for the gathering identified it as a meeting of a three-member committee, which lacks the power to take official action.
The school board argued it followed the law, writing that although four members were present, “it was a regularly scheduled, properly noticed meeting that was open to the public.”
Under state law, however, any notice the committee provided did not absolve the full school board from providing separate notice.
“Once the fourth School Board member was present to discuss, decide, or receive information as a group relating to the official business of the School Board, the committee meeting also became a meeting of the School Board,” Administration Commissioner Alice Roberts-Davis wrote.
Roberts-Davis noted that had the four board members voted unanimously to take some action, “they would have bound the entire School Board and circumvented the (open meeting law), as the public was only provided notice that a committee meeting was taking place on that date.”
Advisory opinions are non-binding and carry no penalties.