From the Daily Advance (12/11/09): City Council was in no danger of violating the N.C. Open Meetings Law by considering proposed taxicab rule changes at the end of the Nov. 30 joint meeting with county officials, an expert on local government procedures said this week.
Answering a question from The Daily Advance, Fleming Bell of the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sent an e-mail to The Daily Advance that clarified Bell’s statement about the meeting that appeared in Wednesday’s newspaper. The article concerned the filibuster by Councilman Kirk Rivers at the Nov. 30 meeting.
In the previous article, Bell was cited as saying City Council could have been in violation of the Open Meetings Law had it held a vote on the taxicab rules at the meeting.
But Bell’s opinion was based on the idea that the meeting was a special session — rather than a regular meeting — of council.
The Daily Advance reporter, when asked whether it was a regular or special meeting, said it was a special meeting — a statement the paper since has learned was inaccurate. The definition of “regular” or “special meeting,” it turns out, does not involve whether it’s a joint meeting or some other particular type of session, but instead refers to the way the meeting was placed on the calendar.
“If a joint meeting of a city council and a board of county commissioners is approved by the council as part of its regular meeting schedule, and if that revised schedule is on file with the clerk for at least seven days prior to the first meeting held pursuant to it, and if the schedule is posted on the city’s Web site, if any, then the joint meeting would be a regular meeting for the city council,” Bell said in an e-mail message to the newspaper.
City officials have provided documentation showing the Nov. 30 meeting was on the annual calendar of meetings, making it a regular meeting.
City Manager Rich Olson said Friday that City Attorney Bill Morgan had researched the law related to adding the agenda item at the meeting and that Morgan would not have allowed elected officials to proceed without advising them of any legal concerns.
“The city attorney did receive an enquiry from a council member whether the item could be added to the agenda,” Olson said. “The attorney reviewed state statutes, reviewed the calendar of meetings that the council had adopted, and determined that this was not a special meeting but was a regular meeting. The Daily Advance should have asked the city attorney and city staff prior to printing such an article whether or not we had researched it.”
Bell did note that the Nov. 30 meeting would have been a special meeting for the county since county requirements differ somewhat from the rules that govern the city regarding the process for scheduling regular meetings.
“If the city council is meeting in regular session, it is free to continue its meeting and conduct further business after the commissioners vote to adjourn the joint portion of the meeting,” Bell’s message states. “The city council is not affected by the commissioners’ vote. When the council adjourns is up to it.”
by Reggie Ponder, Daily Advance Staff Writer