Opinion ID: 4026373
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: district’s status3

Text: ¶14. Kinney claims that the chancery court erred in granting the District’s and MAPDD’s motions for summary judgment because the evidence presented and statutes cited established that the planning and development districts, specifically the District, are public bodies subject to several Mississippi statutes governing and regulating public and governmental bodies. Kinney further claims that the chancery court erred in relying exclusively on Attorney General opinions and Ethics Commission opinions as the basis for its decision. Kinney points to the deposition of the president of the District’s Board of Directors Lynn Cartlidge as support for his position that the District is a public body. Lastly, Kinney submits that, contrary to the chancery court’s finding, the District can be considered a public body while still maintaining its status as a nonprofit corporation. ¶15. Kinney begins by asserting that the chancery court’s decision has no legal basis and is “contrary to Mississippi statutory law, is not supported by any case law, and is contradicted by the fact that [the District and other planning and development districts] are subject to audit by the State Auditor.” We interpret Kinney’s argument to be that Governor John Bell 3 Due to the related nature of Kinney’s first four issues, we address all four issues in one section. 9 Williams’s executive order in 1970 essentially “created” the planning and development districts, even though the planning and development districts were organized, incorporated, and operational several years prior to the executive order. Thus, according to Kinney’s reasoning, the language in Mississippi Code Section 25-61-3, the Public Records Act, and Mississippi Code Section 25-41-3, the Open Meetings laws, that define public bodies as entities created by the Mississippi Constitution, statute, or executive order means that the planning and development districts are considered public bodies and are subject to complying with the Public Records Act and Open Meetings law. ¶16. We disagree with Kinney’s logic. All of the planning and development districts, including the District, were created when they incorporated with the Secretary of State’s Office, not when Governor Williams issued the executive order. Further, we do not interpret the executive order to change the status of any of the planning and development districts or to convert them into governmental entities/public bodies. On the narrow issue of whether the District is a public body for the purposes of the Public Records Act and the Open Meetings law, we hold that the planning and development districts, specifically the District in the present case, were not created by the Mississippi Constitution, statute, or executive order, and Kinney’s argument to the contrary fails. The District was created as a nonprofit corporation in 1966 and has operated continuously as such since that time. Kinney has not produced any evidence that the District’s status or activities have changed. Therefore, summary judgment was appropriate.