Meeting
Over at my boss's blog he writes about a story I wrote for today's paper regarding the commissioners closing access to a certain meeting.
A commenter on that blog and at least one caller to my voice mail have asked if commissioners' meetings weren't legally required to be open.
The short answer is yes, if they have six of the 11 commissioners in the room, they do. But the meeting in question here rarely has more than two or three and has never - at least in my experience - gone to six. This is a different sort of agenda meeting than one that was held a few years ago where a majority of the commissioners regularly attended.
The commissioners are acutely aware of the triggers surrounding the six person limit. During budget negotiations in the Spring, members of majority party typically get together to talk about what they want to see in the budget. They'll purposely exclude some members from that meeting or have some leave early and others come late to abide by the letter - if not the spirit - of the law.
Due to recent automated spamming attacks on our blogs, we are temporarily requiring commenters to authenticate themselves via TypeKey® before posting comments to any News & Record blog in order to prevent denials of service. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.