Request By:
Mr. Michael Morris
Operations and Program Director
WFKY
Capital Plaza
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
In your letter of October 17, 1978, you expressed the suspicion that the Frankfort Electric and Water Plant Board may be in violation of the state's Open Meetings Law, KRS 61.805-61.850. You state as follows:
"A check of the Plant Board's minutes for a period of one year, reflect that their meetings are very brief indeed. This indicates to us that decisions have been made and agreed upon prior to the Board's announced public meeting.
"Further, one of our reporters, while covering the October meeting of the Plant Board, asked Plant Board Manager, John Wagner, why the meetings were so brief. He indicated that memorandums were circulated to Board Members prior to open meetings and that decisions were made from information contained in those memorandums, further, those predetermined decisions were confirmed in the Board's open meetings."
The Attorney General in unable to speculate as to whether an agency has violated the Open Meetings Law simply on the basis of the brevity of the meeting. Also, we can see no illegality in the Plant Board Manager sending memoranda to the Board Members prior to the meeting.
We suggest that the nature of the business conducted by the Plant Board may be such that it is rarely necessary to take up a matter of policy but mainly has to do with fiscal matters in an ongoing business operation; the day-to-day operation of the Plant Board's business is conducted by the Manager, and he has only to satisfy the Board Members that business is being conducted as they have directed.
It has been held that a public agency cannot conduct its business by telephone in lieu of an open meeting. Fiscal Court of Jefferson County v. Courier Journal and Louisville Times Company, Ky., 554 S.W.2d 72 (1977). And we would not condone the deciding of policy matters by memorandum alone and simple acquiescence by the agency members. However, on the information at hand we cannot opine that the Frankfort Electric and Water Plant Board has committed any violation of the Open Meetings Law.