Our view: Closed meeting ruling offers lesson

The state’s advisory opinion this month that Thomson Township supervisors violated the Open Meeting Law should be a reminder to all elected officials that closing meetings should be done sparingly and always with strict attention to the law.

In the case of Thomson Township, supervisors closed a September meeting to discuss candidates for the seat vacated by Jason Paulson in August. In private discussion, they whittled the number of candidates from six to three finalists.

Several mistakes were made, including the initial assumption that the board could apply a very narrow personnel exception to close the meeting, and not naming the candidates (or notifying them) before they closed the meeting. One more, a doozy we learned about last week, was allegedly not recording the meeting and keeping that recording for three years as is required by law.

As we learned from the Wrenshall school board’s appointment of Bill Dian last year, boards don’t actually have meetings to discuss applicants. A board can skip the open discussion and simply vote. But why would it? Who makes a decision about the best person to help lead a community without evaluating them?

We take our role as government watchdog seriously at the Pine Knot News. At the same time, we don’t want to presume a body guilty when it may have been an unintentional error.

But when we reached out to question the closed meeting, the attorneys representing the township insisted the meeting was lawfully closed to the public. Failing to find any common understanding of the law, we took it to the Department of Administration to decide.

The commissioner’s finding is important, and prevents these seemingly small decisions from whittling away at the integrity of the Open Meeting Law.

It’s also time to move forward.

As former supervisor Jason Paulson wrote in a letter to the editor and board members this week, mistakes were made by the Thomson Township board and its attorneys. Restarting the selection process is a giant step toward rectifying those. It is the right thing to do.

We will watch carefully to make sure the selection process is conducted properly. If it isn’t, the next option in the process would be to take the township to court, where a judge, unlike the state commissioner, can impose consequences.

It should not have to come to that.

To read the entire advisory opinion, go here: https://mn.gov/admin/data-practices/opinions/library/opinions-library.jsp?id=36-549227