The Buck Stops Where? Closed-Door Meetings Keep Public In The Dark

Taxpayers never will know how much they’re paying to cover the Bonner County commissioners’ bungled elimination of the county building department.

The commissioners spent days this year secretly negotiating with the eight building department employees they axed. Then commissioners and their insurance company agreed to pay the employees and their attorney rather than go to court.

It’s all legal, thanks to an often-used privilege in Idaho allowing government bodies to conduct business in closed “executive sessions.” As a result, all the public will ever know is the building department debacle, once advertised as surefire savings for taxpayers, sparked four lawsuits and contributed to a $250,000 increase in the county’s annual insurance premium.

Executive sessions are supposed to give government bodies narrow grounds to deal with sensitive legal issues or make better real estate deals. But the sessions also have become a convenient shroud for hiding embarrassing or politically volatile information from the other participants in a democracy - taxpayers.

Because deliberations conducted in executive sessions never are recorded, it’s almost impossible to tell whether government bodies abuse executive sessions. And governments in North Idaho spend ample time in these secret sessions.

That runs contrary to the concept of open government.

“You elect people to public office to act in a public manner,” attorney Scott Reed said.

Open meetings “work very much in the public interest - you allow for public involvement,” he added. Too much secrecy means “too many deals cooked up behind closed doors …frequently having to do with benefiting a particular individual,” Reed said.

In 1993, for example, Reed represented a group of citizens who successfully sued the Sandpoint City Council over an annexation attempt. Then-Mayor Dwight Sheffler met individually with each council member and then called a public hearing when he had a majority convinced of the wisdom of annexation, Reed said.

At the public hearing, 35 people spoke in opposition to the annexation and none spoke in favor. The council approved the deal anyway by a 5-1 vote. But because the mayor’s private lobbying violated the open meeting law, Judge Gary Haman nullified the annexation.

Still, Reed believes most governing bodies follow the law most of the time.

“To turn these people into monks so they have to take an oath of silence until they are in public doesn’t make sense,” Reed said.

The costs of secret government soar beyond simple monetary interests. Executive sessions also can deprive taxpayers of important information.

Last spring, the North Idaho College Board of Trustees spent 98 minutes in three executive sessions before firing college President Robert Bennett. Idaho law allows such closed-door discussions about such personnel matters.

After the final secret meeting, the board voted “to approve the agreement between the NIC Board of Trustees and C. Robert Bennett as presented in executive session.” That’s all the public was told, beyond general statements about communication problems between the board and Bennett.

Public outrage over the firing and the secrecy prompted attempts at a recall of the NIC Board of Trustees.

Executive sessions are so routine that both the Coeur d’Alene City Council and the Bonner County School District have made them a permanent part of regular meeting agendas.

The Coeur d’Alene School Board spent more than 52 hours in 31 separate executive sessions in 1997 alone, but isn’t the leader. The Bonner County Commissioners had 46 closed sessions last year and the Bonner County School Board had 67, logging approximately 128 hours behind closed doors.

In both cases, the closed-door meetings often were called separately from regularly scheduled meetings.

Idaho law allows eight reasons for calling an executive session, most of them centering on hiring and firing people or defending lawsuits. The Coeur d’Alene City Council cited litigation, real estate and labor negotiations every time it called an executive session last year.

In many cases, the council made decisions about legal claims after the closed session, according to city records. After a 50-minute executive session last May, however, the council voted to put the mayor and council members’ salaries on the agenda for their next meeting.

That doesn’t mean salaries for the mayor and council were discussed out of public’s earshot, former Mayor Al Hassell said.

“I don’t think we discussed it,” said Hassell, who lost to Steve Judy in the November general election. “I think it came out of a discussion about pay and benefits.”

The Coeur d’Alene mayor and council did not raise their pay last year.

While the Idaho attorney general’s office said the number of executive sessions is declining, Hassell said they increased during his 12 years on the City Council and in the mayor’s chair.

Blame it on lawsuits.

“There probably is an increase in number just by our society’s different way of looking at things,” Hassell said. “It’s not my fault - sue someone. It’s the new American lottery.”

That drives the council into closed-door sessions to hear from attorneys about claims or pending lawsuits. “You may have between 10 and 50 claims going at any one time,” Hassell said.

The city also spends a lot of time negotiating to buy rights-of-way for street projects. Discussing those real estate deals in executive sessions prevents others from bidding up the price because they want to cash in on the city’s interest, Hassell said.

Some government bodies cite all of the exemptions in the law before retreating behind closed doors. When questioned, however, public officials most often blame personnel issues and lawsuits.

The Coeur d’Alene School Board cites its search for a new superintendent as one reason for spending the equivalent of more than two days in executive sessions last year. The Bonner County School Board blames fully half of its sessions on student conduct hearings.

“By pure numbers, people might get the impression we are doing too much business behind closed doors,” said Jerry Owens, a Bonner County School trustee. “But the public hasn’t missed out on anything. We are only doing what is necessary.”

Government boards don’t have to go into executive session to cloud public scrutiny. The Bonner County commissioners used vague language on the agenda for the meeting where they voted to abolish the building department.

Commissioner Dale Van Stone went against his two fellow commissioners and filed a complaint with the county prosecutor. A citizen group sued separately.

A judge ruled the murky agenda amounted to a violation of the open meeting law. He awarded the citizen’s group attorney fees and repealed the commissioners’ vote to abolish the building department.

But that sort of objection is rare and prosecution of open meeting violations almost never brings fines or other penalties.

“They are rare because people are doing things properly,” said Bill van Tagen, deputy state attorney general. “Or they are rare because the people watching (government) aren’t knowledgeable about making complaints.”

The Idaho attorney general’s office has made a concerted effort to educate people about the law and that’s helped reduce complaints, van Tagen said. Still, compliance largely depends upon honest politicians.

“You hope they abide by (the law),” van Tagen said, “just as you hope that if there is a county commissioners meeting in Boise, they don’t conduct business together in the car” on the way to the meeting.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Graphic: Secret business

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Ken Olsen and Kevin Keating Staff writers Staff writers Susan Drumheller and Andrea Vogt contributed to this report.