Source: https://docs.dos.ny.gov/coog/otext/o3354.htm
Timestamp: 2017-10-19 01:37:51
Document Index: 153704193

Matched Legal Cases: ['§105', '§105', '§102', '§102', '§41', '§41', '§100', '§105', '§105', '§105', '§106', '§1708', '§3020', '§1232']

OML-AO-3354
I have received your letter of July 13. You have requested an advisory opinion concerning
the Open Meetings Law relating to a series of events in which the Onteora Board of Education, upon which you serve, and certain of its members, have been involved.
With respect to the initial event, you wrote that:
"On May 29, 2001, the Onteora Board of Education held a special meeting for the purpose of conducting an executive session with its attorney to discuss on-going litigation. No public business was conducted at the May 29, 2001 meeting.
"At the end of the executive session, the board president announced he had received a letter of resignation from Trustee Vanacore, effective June 5, 2001. Without returning to a formal public session to decide on a method to fill the vacancy, Mr. Millman unilaterally
directed the District Clerk to place advertisements in local newspapers announcing the upcoming (not yet effective) vacancy. These advertisements required an expenditure of district funds, which were not authorized at a public meeting of our Board of Education.
Mr. Millman also directed the advertisements contain a deadline of June 15, 2001 (at 3:30 p.m.) for receipt of applications and resumes and that interviews with applicants would follow."
In this regard, by way of background, the Open Meetings Law is based on a presumption of openness. Stated differently, meetings of public bodies must be conducted in public except to the extent that an executive session may appropriately be held. Paragraphs (a) through (h) of §105(1) of the Open Meetings Law specify and limit the subjects that may properly be considered during an executive session.
While the beginning of the executive session appears to have been validly held, for it
involved consideration of "on-going litigation" [see Open Meetings Law, §105(1)(d)], the remainder, in my view, concerned matters that should have been discussed in public. In short, none of the grounds for conducting an executive session would, in my opinion, have been pertinent or applicable.
Next, at the ensuing "scheduled public board meeting", which was held on June 4, you
"...the board approved Trustee Vanacore's resignation. In the only public discussion regarding the board's plan to fill the vacancy, I made a motion to accept letters of interest and resumes for the board vacancy until Friday, July 6, 2001, 5:00 PM at the District Offices. The motion was defeated. At the public session the board did not authorize Mr. Millman's previous unilateral directives.
"You wrote that the matter of filling the vacancy on the Board was not discussed at the Board meeting of June 18, but that a newspaper article published subsequent to that meeting stated that Trustee Millman said that:
"...he, Trustee Doan, Trustee Walters and Trustee Perry had discussed the applications ‘....after a school board meeting, in the hallway'."
With respect to the foregoing, first, from my perspective, voting and action by a public body may be carried out only at a meeting during which a quorum has physically convened, or during a meeting held by videoconference. It is noted that the Open Meetings Law pertains to public bodies, and that §102(2) defines the phrase "public body" to mean:
Further, §102(1) of the Open Meetings Law defines the term "meeting" to mean "the official convening of a public body for the purpose of conducting public business, including the use of videoconferencing for attendance and participation by the members of the public body." Based upon an ordinary dictionary definition of "convene", that term means:
The provisions in the Open Meetings Law concerning videoconferencing are newly enacted (Chapter 289 of the Laws of 2000), and in my view, those amendments clearly indicate that there are only two ways in which a public body may validly conduct a meeting. Any other means of conducting a meeting, i.e., by telephone conference, by mail, by e-mail, or by gathering "in the hallway", would be inconsistent with law.
Based on the foregoing, again, a valid meeting may occur and action may be taken only when a majority of the total membership of a public body, a quorum, has "gathered together in the presence of each other or through the use of videoconferencing." Moreover, only when a quorum has convened in the manner described in §41 of the General Construction Law would a public body have the authority to carry out its powers and duties.
Just as significant, particularly in consideration of your remarks, based on §41, one member, acting unilaterally, would not ordinarily have the legal authority to take action on behalf of the board on which he or she serves.
I note, too, that the legislative declaration of the Open Meetings Law, §100, states in part
"It is essential to the maintenance of a democratic society that the public business be performed in an open and public manner and that the citizens of this state be fully aware of and able to observe the performance of public officials and attend and listen to the
Based on the foregoing, the Open Meetings Law is intended to provide the public with the right to observe the performance of public officials in their deliberations.
Second, with regard to the process of filling a vacancy in an elective office, the only
provision that might justify the holding of an executive session is §105(1)(f) of the Open Meetings Law, which permits a public body to enter into an executive session to discuss:
Under the language quoted above, it would appear that a discussion focusing on the individual candidates could validly be considered in an executive session, for it would involve a matter leading to the appointment of a particular person. Nevertheless, in the only decision of which I am aware that dealt directly with the propriety of holding an executive to discuss filling a vacancy in an elective office, the court found that there was no basis for entry into executive session. In determining that an executive session could not properly have been held, the court stated that:
"...respondents' reliance on the portion of Section 105(1)(f) which states that a Board in executive session may discuss the 'appointment...of a particular person...' is misplaced. In this Court's opinion, given the liberality with which the law's requirements of openness are to be interpreted (Holden v. Board of Trustees of Cornell Univ., 80 AD2d 378) and given the obvious importance of protecting the voter's franchise this section should be interpreted as applying only to employees of the municipality and not to appointments to fill the unexpired terms of elected officials. Certainly, the matter of replacing elected officials, should be subject to public input and scrutiny" (Gordon v. Village of Monticello,
Supreme Court, Sullivan County, January 7, 1994), modified on other grounds, 207 AD 2d 55 (1994)].
Based on the foregoing, notwithstanding its language, the court in Gordon held that §105(1)(f) could not be asserted to conduct an executive session. I point out that the Appellate Division affirmed the substance of the lower court decision but did not refer to the passage quoted above. Whether other courts would uniformly concur with the finding enunciated in that passage is conjectural. However, since it is the only decision that has dealt squarely with the issue at hand, I believe that it is appropriate to consider Gordon as an influential precedent.
Lastly, while it is not entirely clear whether action was taken during an executive session,
based on judicial decisions, a board of education may do so only in rare instances. As a general rule, a public body may take action during a properly convened executive session [see Open Meetings Law, §105(1)]. In the case of most public bodies, if action is taken during an executive session, minutes reflective of the action, the date and the vote must be recorded in minutes pursuant to §106(2) of the Law. If no action is taken, there is no requirement that minutes of the executive session be prepared. Various interpretations of the Education Law, §1708(3), however, indicate that, except in situations in which action during a closed session is permitted or required by statute, a school board cannot take action during an executive session [see United Teachers of Northport v. Northport Union Free School District, 50 AD 2d 897 (1975); Kursch et al. v. Board of Education, Union Free School District #1, Town of North Hempstead, Nassau County, 7 AD 2d 922 1959); Sanna v. Lindenhurst, 107 Misc. 2d 267, modified 85 AD 2d 157, aff'd 58 NY 2d 626 (1982)]. Stated differently, based upon judicial interpretations of the Education Law, a school board generally cannot vote during an executive session, except in those unusual circumstances in which a statute permits or requires such a vote.
Those circumstances would arise, for example, when a board initiates charges against a
tenured person pursuant to §3020-a of the Education Law, which requires that a vote to do so be taken during an executive session. The other instance would involve a situation in which action in public could identify a student. When information derived from a record that is personally identifiable to a student, the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (20 USC §1232g) would prohibit disclosure absent consent by a parent of the student. None of those circumstances would appear to relevant in the context of the information that you provided.