CAPE GIRARDEAU SCHOOL BOARD'S CLOSED MEETING BRINGS ABOUT QUESTIONS OF ILLEGALITY

The Cape Girardeau school board might have violated the Missouri open meetings law during a closed meeting Monday, the legal counsel for the Missouri Press Association said.

Board members closed the meeting to discuss a matter related to a student, which the state's open meetings law allows, but during the closed meeting members also heard how would-be buyers of May Greene Elementary School planned to use the building.

Section 610.021(2) of the Missouri Revised Statutes, part of the state's Sunshine Law, authorizes public governmental bodies to close meetings for a variety of reasons, including the "leasing, purchase or sale of real estate ..." where public knowledge might adversely affect a transaction.

Board president Dr. Ferrell Ervin said there was no discussion of sale price when representatives from First Assembly of God Church and the SEMO Facilities Corp. made presentations during the closed session in hopes of winning the board's approval to purchase May Greene School.

Instead, the groups made presentations detailing how they would use the school and how they planned to finance the property's maintenance and upkeep, said Ervin.

The meeting probably violated state law because there was no financial discussion during the presentations, said Jean Maneke, the legal counsel for the Missouri Press Association.

"I think it certainly raises questions about why it was closed," Maneke said. "I would view it as a potential violation."

Maneke based her opinion on a state Supreme Court decision in December. "The court said it would be viewing those discussions very narrowly," she said, and she doesn't think the school board's closed session "fits at all within the discussion."

In Spradlin versus the City of Fulton, justices ruled city officials erred when they closed meetings to discuss a financial agreement "related to" a potential lease by the city of a golf course after the land had been sold. The specific terms of the lease agreement were not discussed in the meetings.

Justices referred to section 610.011, which states that "Sections 610.010 to 610.028 shall be liberally construed and their exceptions strictly construed to promote this public policy."

"While the discussions at the closed meeting may have 'related to' the city's leasing of the golf course in the broadest sense, the discussions did not qualify for closure because they did not 'directly relate to the specific reason announced to justify the closed meeting,'" the justices wrote in their decision. "There are no exceptions in section 610.021 for discussing a real estate transaction between a private developer and a landowner, for discussing the developer's plans for the real estate, or for discussing the financing through municipal bonds of a development on real estate not yet purchased."

Cape Girardeau School Superintendent Dr. Dan Steska said he was unaware of any potential law violation. "If it was, it wasn't intended to be," he said.

He said he originally had planned to hear the presentations in open session but removed them from that agenda because all real estate issues had "traditionally been discussed in closed session."

"The presentations on the May Greene issue could have been discussed in open session," Steska said. "There really would have been no problem with that. It's just my experience with that is if there is the possibility of discussion regarding the sale of property, that has traditionally been discussed in closed session."

This isn't the school board's first questionable closed session. Another closed session was questioned in April 1998, when then-school board member Steve Wright requested a closed session to discuss a personnel issue.

The public meeting reconvened after a 20-minute closed session, and Ervin stated there was no announcement regarding action taken during closed session.

That closed session was not announced 24 hours in advance of the meeting as directed by state law. When a meeting doesn't meet this notice requirement, state law requires that "the nature of the good cause justifying that departure from the normal requirements shall be stated in the minutes."

Ervin said the presentations at Monday's meeting were made during closed session based on his interpretation of the open meetings law.

"It was my interpretation that this would be a part of the same kind of discussions that would go on in any particular discussion about the purchase or sale of property," he said.

Ervin said the superintendent recommends meeting agendas to the president of the board for approval, but not all recommendations are accepted when submitted.

For example, Ervin said if Steska recommended consideration of a particular policy, and Ervin thought there wasn't enough information for the board to act, that item would be removed from the agenda until more information was available.

Although no information regarding the sale of the building was mentioned, presenters might not have wanted to publicize some of the financial information they provided during the meeting, Ervin said.

"I'm sure that there were parts of the material that the organizations as a whole might not have wanted to share in an open session," he said.

He maintained there was no intention to violate the law and that the school board wants to provide the public with free access to information regarding the district's business proceedings.

"There was no intent to keep anyone from ultimately knowing what was going on in terms of negotiation," Ervin said. "It's been my experience, and we've generally been very consistent about trying to do everything in a public fashion. There's never any attempt or reason for there to be an attempt on our part to do anything privately, except where we would be violating some other type of guideline to do it in a public arena."