The city charter’s “open meetings” section, last amended in 1991, allows an executive session “to discuss the recruitment, establishment, retention or expansion of any private business.”
According to minutes from their March 1 meeting, the Urbana City Council discussed their rules and the Springfield News-Sun’s investigation of executive sessions,.
City Council member Al Evans said the executive sessions during that meeting were about Ice River Springs, a water-bottling facility moving to St. Paris that Urbana was courting at the time. He said the city’s economic development director told them the Ohio Department of Development “didn’t want anybody to know, until they made the announcement.”
While the Ohio Constitution allows charter governments to write some of their own rules, there is little case law on how much a city can exempt itself from the Open Meetings Act, according to Rob Moormann, an assistant Ohio attorney general, who helped write the state Sunshine Manual, which details the Open Meetings Act and public records laws. “The home rule and how it affects the obligations of the Open Meetings Act is really still an open question,” Moormann said.
In order to find out if they were following the law, someone would have to sue Urbana seeking an injunction and let the courts decide.
State law doesn’t give the Ohio Attorney General’s Office authority to enforce the Open Meetings Act, and the office can’t opine on whether specific actions are appropriate, Moormann said.
About this series
This is day two of a three-day series exploring meetings of elected officials that happen outside of public view, called executive sessions, and problems with the laws that allow them.
Today: Urbana City Council says state law doesn't apply.
Tuesday: Many elected officials untrained in Open Meetings Act.
About the Author
