Senate to vote on opening meetings
BOISE – Senators will vote next week on a Republican-backed measure to keep most legislative committee meetings open to the public, except in circumstances such as discussing lawsuits or potential land sales.
Currently, the Senate and House can close sessions at will.
The House is expected to follow suit with similar rule changes next week, House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, R-Burley, told the Associated Press.
Friday’s 4-2 vote in the Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee was party-driven, with Democrats saying all meetings should be open. Media groups also criticized the legislation, in particular for a provision that repeals a section of the Idaho Open Meeting Law requiring all committee meetings be open to the public, at all times.
Still, some groups including The Common Interest, a collection of 850 self-proclaimed political moderates formed in 2005, said the changes would represent some of the broadest state prohibitions against closing committee meetings in the West.
Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, sponsor of the package, said he aimed to strike a balance, keeping virtually all committee meetings open but allowing legislators on rare occasions the flexibility to discuss sensitive matters among themselves. No votes would be allowed in closed sessions, and 24-hour public notice would have to be given.
“Under no circumstances will an executive session be held to make a final decision,” Davis said. “I think it’s the right thing to do.”
The move comes after a March 20 ruling of the Idaho Supreme Court that the state constitution’s requirement that the Legislature be conducted openly, “not in secret session,” was intended to apply just to general floor sessions, not legislative committee meetings.
That case had been brought by the Idaho Press Club in 2003, when six committee meetings were closed. Additional meetings were closed a year later as lawmakers negotiated a landmark water rights settlement with the Nez Perce Tribe in which a judge required confidential sessions.
According to the proposed new Senate rules:
“ Closed meetings could only occur on a two-thirds committee vote.
“ The only matters that could be discussed in such a session would be records exempted from public disclosure, pending litigation, personnel matters, security issues such as terrorist threats and consideration of property purchases.
“ Only in cases where an innocent third party could be harmed would disciplinary matters involving lawmakers be closed to the public.
Keith Allred, president of The Common Interest, which added input to help shape the new rules, said they’ve been drafted even more narrowly than existing Idaho Open Meeting Law.
That allows closed sessions to discuss “probable litigation,” leeway not afforded in the Senate rule.
“It’s a wise balancing of the compelling interest we have in openness, with circumstances that would require meetings to be closed,” Allred said of the package.
Sens. Kate Kelly and Mike Burkett, both Boise Democrats, criticized the plan, arguing that two more expansive proposals being backed by the minority party – one a constitutional amendment, the other a rule change – have been refused a hearing this year by Republican leaders who hold a 4-1 majority.
“That proposal is out there,” Kelly said. “It’s unfortunate that it didn’t have a discussion.”
Burkett suggested there were ample alternatives to executive sessions, including briefings of individual committee members by the Idaho attorney general when discussions of litigation call for discretion.
Betsy Russell, president of the Idaho Press Club and a reporter for The Spokesman-Review, said she felt betrayed by the package.
The media group representing journalists at newspapers, radio and TV stations covering the state has been lobbying for the Senate to draft the rule even more narrowly.
Most frustrating, she said, was the proposed repeal of a provision of the Idaho Open Meeting Law, passed in the 1970s, that requires legislative committee meetings to be open to the public “at all times.”