Board may have violated open meeting law, AG says
The Idaho State Board of Education may have violated the Idaho Open Meeting Law, Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden announced this morning, but because of a recent state Supreme Court decision, he couldn’t find that they’d “knowingly” done so. “The board would benefit from receiving training on the open meeting law,” Wasden said at a news conference – adding that that training already has been scheduled. He also found that the board didn’t make a decision at a Dec. 6 closed meeting to eliminate 9th grade ISAT testing, so the Open Meeting Law’s sanction of overturning any decision made in a closed meeting doesn’t come into play. Though the board announced that decision in a news release the following Monday, Wasden said his investigation found that the release was inaccurate, and that the board didn’t make that decision until a special meeting called for that purpose on Dec. 20. That was a week after the filing of the open meeting complaint that prompted Wasden’s investigation.
Wasden said, “The open meeting law is really a critical factor in allowing the public to participate in our government.” He said his office advises a “more narrow interpretation” of the law than the state board has taken, and said the board’s upcoming training is “wholly appropriate.”
You can read the Attorney General’s full report here (it's a very large PDF file), his news release here and his statement from the press conference here.
