Opinion ID: 2211455
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Open Meetings Act Claim

Text: The OMA provides, in part: (1) All meetings of a public body shall be open to the public and shall be held in a place available to the general public.... (2) All decisions of a public body shall be made at a meeting open to the public. (3) All deliberations of a public body constituting a quorum of its members shall take place at a meeting open to the public.... [MCL 15.263; MSA 4.1800(13).] The statute strictly limits closed session meetings of public bodies and expressly states that, except as otherwise provided..., all interviews by a public body for employment or appointment to a public office shall be held in an open meeting pursuant to this act. MCL 15.268(f); MSA 4.1800(18)(f).
Plaintiff argues that (1) the city manager in this case was a public body, (2) the city manager and city commission together formed a public body, and (3) in any event, the committee that established the hiring criteria, screened the initial applications, and conducted interviews before reducing the field to three applicants was a public body. The Court of Appeals agreed that the city manager may be a public body in his own right, and that he is certainly part of a public body when he acts in concert with the city commission. We disagree with the analysis suggested by plaintiff and the Court of Appeals. The threshold issue under the OMA is whether an entity is a public body. The OMA defines public body as any state or local legislative or governing body, including a board, commission, committee, subcommittee, authority, or council, which is empowered by state constitution, statute, charter, ordinance, resolution, or rule to exercise governmental or proprietary authority or perform a governmental or proprietary function, or a lessee thereof performing an essential public purpose and function pursuant to the lease agreement. [MCL 15.262(a); MSA 4.1800(12)(a).] The definition of public body in the OMA contains two requirements: First, the entity at issue must be a state or local legislative or governing body, including a board, commission, committee, subcommittee, authority, or council. Second, the entity must be empowered ... to exercise governmental or proprietary authority or perform a governmental or proprietary function, and that power must derive from state constitution, statute, charter, ordinance, resolution, or rule.... As used in the OMA, the term public body  connotes a collective entity. The statutory terms used illustratively to define public bodylegislative body and governing body-do not encompass individuals. A single individual is not commonly understood to be akin to a board, commission, committee, subcommittee, authority, or councilthe bodies specifically listed in the act by the Legislature. [10] We draw additional comfort in our construction of the OMA because the Legislature is certainly free to define, and has, in fact, defined elsewhere, the term public body in such a way as to encompass individuals. [11] However, it would be awkward, to say the least, to apply the OMA to an individual. Perhaps the strongest common-sense basis for concluding that an individual was not contemplated by the Legislature as a public body is to consider how odd a concept it would be to require an individual to deliberate in an open meeting. MCL 15.263(3); MSA 4.1800(13)(3). Thus, we conclude that an individual executive acting in his executive capacity is not a public body for the purposes of the OMA. [12] The Court of Appeals observed that, under the Bay City Charter, the city commission shall appoint a fire chief on the recommendation of the city manager. [13] According to the Court of Appeals, that provision arguably effectively delegates the function of selecting the fire chief to the city manager. [14] We disagree with the proposition that an individual executive making a recommendation to a deciding body constitutes a delegation of authority. The city commission did not delegate to the city manager the responsibility to make a recommendation; that authority is given directly to the city manager by the charter. Further, the fact that the charter requires the city commission to act only on the recommendation of the city manager in no way constitutes a delegation of the commission's right to make the final determination regarding whether a recommended individual should be appointed to the position under the Bay City Charter. [15] We see no merit to plaintiff's contention that the city manager and city commission together constitute a public body. Certainly the city commission constitutes a public body when it appoints a fire chief, but the city manager remains an individual executive. We see no basis in the OMA to combine for the purposes of this statute two separate entities where each entity is performing its own independent function as designated in the city charter. The cases plaintiff relies on for this proposition are inapposite. In Menominee Co. Taxpayers Alliance, Inc. v. Menominee Co. Clerk, 139 Mich.App. 814, 362 N.W.2d 871 (1984), the Court held that a group formed as required by statute to select a new county treasurer was a public body for the purposes of the OMA. [16] The group consisted of the county clerk, the prosecutor, and a probate judge. After the county treasurer resigned, this statutorily prescribed group met in private and selected a new treasurer. The plaintiff then filed suit alleging that the group was a public body subject to the OMA. After the trial court dismissed the case, the Court of Appeals reversed and held that the group was a public body. Id. at 819, 362 N.W.2d 871. The group in Menominee was a collective body in the plainest sense, thus satisfying the first requirement for a public body under the OMA. The fact that the three members held other positions was essentially irrelevant because, while on the committee, they were voting members of a group that was empowered by statute to exercise governmental authority. In the present case, the city manager was acting as a city manager, not as a commissioner or committee member. Plaintiff also relies on our holding in Booth Newspapers, Inc v. Univ. of Michigan Bd. of Regents, 444 Mich. 211, 507 N.W.2d 422 (1993), to support the proposition that the city manager, individually, constituted a public body. Like Menominee, Booth is not analogous to the present case. In Booth, the University of Michigan Board of Regents attempted to evade the requirements of the OMA during the process of selecting a new university president. The board took several evasive actions, including: (1) appointing itself as a presidential selection committee, (2) entrusting one regent with the authority to make cuts in the candidate list, (3) using a system of telephone calls and subquorum meetings to gather the opinions of all regents without convening a meeting of a quorum of the board, and (4) having small, subquorum groups of regents interview candidates. Id. at 216-219, 507 N.W.2d 422. This Court held that the board violated the OMA. The important distinguishing feature of Booth was that the board was clearly a public body that was subject to the OMA, and the various regents and subquorum groups had no independent authority to narrow the field, make a recommendation, or select a president. The board effectively sought to delegate its authority as a body subject to the OMA to various bodies of its own creation that it believed were not subject to the OMA, for the express purpose of avoiding the requirements of the OMA. [17] Thus, the decision in Booth precluded an attempt by a public body to evade the OMA (and thus circumvent legislative intent) by delegating its authority. In this case, the city manager was assigned the task of recommending a new fire chief directly by the city charter, and, therefore, he required no delegation of authority from the city commission in order to perform that function. Under these circumstances, the Legislature, by electing not to include individuals in the definition of public body in the OMA, has exempted the city manager from its requirements. [18] Nor do we agree with the contention that the committee that was formed by the city manager was subject to the requirements of the OMA under the rationale in Booth. The city manager may have delegated some of his authority to the committee he created and, were the city manager himself subject to the OMA, the committee he created might also have been subject to the OMA pursuant to Booth. Here, however, because the city manager was not subject to the OMA, Booth has no application. Because the city manager's committee in this case was not empowered by state constitution, statute, charter, ordinance, resolution, or rule, it was not a public body for purposes of the OMA, and the committee's actions did not violate that statute. [19]