Request By:
Mr. Jim Henahan
Asst. Managing Editor
The News-Enterprise
P.O. Box 430
408 West Dixie
Elizabethtown, Kentucky 42701
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
You have requested an opinion of the Attorney General concerning certain procedures followed by the Mayor and City Council of the city of Elizabethtown. In your letter you relate the following incident:
"The mayor contacted council members by phone and asked them if they would approve his going before the Manpower Council of the Lincoln Trail Development District and apply for funding for a city planner and secretary. The council members gave their approval either by phone or letter (we don't know which) and the mayor made application. At the next regularly scheduled council meeting the subject of hiring a planner and secretary was raised and voted on approvingly. There was little open discussion. This vote occurred after the mayor had applied for the funds.
"Our question is this: Does this procedure constitute voting behind closed doors in violation of state law? Secondly, does the mayor need the formal vote of council to apply for funds as in this case?"
It appears that 2 technical violations have been committed by the procedure you described.
The city of Elizabethtown is a 4th class city, KRS 81.010, and the duties and powers of the Mayor are set forth in KRS 86.200. Technically the Mayor does not have the authority to request a grant of funds for the City without being first authorized to do so by the City Council.
Under the Kentucky Open Meetings Law, KRS 61.805-61.850, it is not proper for a public agency to make a decision by a poll of the members over the telephone. All actions of the City Council should be in an open meeting unless the subject matter is exempted by KRS 61.810. The action should be in the form of an ordinance or a resolution. (See City of Hickman v. Helm, 264 Ky. 266, 94 S.W.2d 665 (1936.)
The proper procedure in the case you describe would be for the City Council to adopt a resolution in an open meeting authorizing the Mayor to seek the grant for a specific purpose. The meeting should either be a regular meeting of the Council or a special meeting called after giving due notice to all the media which is requested to be notified.