Opinion ID: 1713846
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Application of Law to This Case: Did the Negotiating Committee Have a Meeting?

Text: Examining the undisputed facts in the record, we find no support for a finding that the negotiating committee had responsibility for anything more than simply recommending or suggesting to the board what course of action to take on the Marquette-McGregor project. The July 2001 board minutes reveal that the committee was to determine a potential award amount and to recommend whether it should be a Vision Iowa or a CAT award. (Emphasis added.) There is no evidence that authority to set the award amount or decide whether it should be made under the Vision Iowa or CAT programs was given to the committee. Later, in October 2001, the committee recommended an award of $5 million from the Vision Iowa program, with certain contingencies. It is undisputed that the board approved the recommendation and charged the negotiating committee with reviewing the development agreement to advise the board as to whether it was acceptable. (Emphasis added.) Again, ultimate authority to accept or reject the development agreement was reserved to the board; the committee's duty was advisory only. Eventually, the committee reported that it had not been able to negotiate an agreement within the conditions established by the board's grant, and so the committee recommended only a portion of the project be funded under a CAT award. Acting on this recommendation, the board chose to withdraw its Vision Iowa grant. Once again, the board made the ultimate decision on the course of action to be taken on the project. Relying on a Florida case, the plaintiffs suggest we should take judicial notice of the fact that committee recommendations are often accepted by public bodies at face value and with little discussion. Bigelow v. Howze, 291 So.2d 645, 647 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App.1974). In view of this fact, plaintiffs argue, the negotiating committee was the de facto policy-maker on the Marquette-McGregor project. We do not think this fact is a proper subject for judicial notice. The Iowa Rules of Evidence allow a court to take judicial notice of certain adjudicative facts. Iowa R. Evid. 5.201( a ). A judicially noticed fact must be one not subject to reasonable dispute in that it is either (1) generally known within the territorial jurisdiction of the trial court or (2) capable of accurate and ready determination by resort to sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned. Iowa R. Evid. 5.201( b ). The suggestion that committee recommendations are routinely followed by public bodies is not generally known, nor is it capable of accurate and ready determination. Therefore, we cannot take judicial notice of this fact. See Warford v. Des Moines Metro. Transit Auth., 381 N.W.2d 622, 623 (Iowa 1986) (refusing to take judicial notice of inter-governmental agreement creating MTA because it is not the type of evidence that is `common knowledge or capable of certain verification'). The plaintiffs also argue that the negotiating committee's failure to bring a recommendation to the board at the board's March meeting, as one board member had previously requested, was certainly setting policy in this regard because, as a result, the fate of the project was not decided at the March board meeting. We do not think the committee's inability to meet a deadline imposed by one board member set policy. The committee's charge was simply to make recommendations to the board. The committee had no recommendation in March, so the board took no action on the project at that time. The record shows that ultimately the committee brought a recommendation to the board, and the board decided to withdraw its grant. This sequence of events does not support a finding that the committee had or exercised any policy-making duties. In a related argument, the plaintiffs also rely on the fact the agenda for the board's March 2003 meeting included an update on the Marquette-McGregor project; yet, they contend, the project was not discussed because it was taken off the agenda by the negotiating committee. In response, the defendants claim the board minutes show the project was discussed at that meeting; there was simply no recommendation made by the negotiating committee as had been anticipated. [2] We do not think any factual dispute regarding whether or not the project was discussed at the board's March meeting is material to a determination of whether the negotiating committee had a meeting within the meaning of Iowa's open meetings law. Therefore, this dispute does not preclude summary judgment. See Fin. Mktg. Servs., Inc. v. Hawkeye Bank & Trust, 588 N.W.2d 450, 455-56 (Iowa 1999). Even if we accept as a fact that the negotiating committee was responsible for a failure by the board to discuss the project in March, again, this fact is not material to whether a meeting of the committee took place prior to the board's March meeting. The committee's failure to make a recommendation in March, thereby leaving the board with nothing to consider, does not demonstrate the committee had any authority to set or direct board policy. There is nothing in the record to show the board could not have considered the project in March had it been willing to forgo a recommendation from its negotiating committee and a review of the recent financial information provided by the project supporters. The board minutes show that board members were free to ask questions about the project or to make comments concerning it, and several members did so during the course of the board's March meeting. Finally, the plaintiffs contend that prior to the board's March meeting, the committee met with project proponents to manipulate a way to make this project go in spite of the objections from members of the public. The plaintiffs support this conclusion with a memo prepared by one of the proponents in which the proponent states that the proponents should request a meeting prior to [the board's] regularly scheduled meeting to provide [an] update, so that we don't have to discuss this in front of the world. The plaintiffs claim [t]his is exactly the kind of activity by a public body that needs to be conducted in the light of public scrutiny. Initially, we note it is somewhat of a leap to conclude that the proponents' desire to discuss their financial difficulties in private indicated an intent to manipulate the process. Nonetheless, even if we accept the plaintiffs' assertion that those discussions should be conducted in public, this court is constrained by the terms of the open meetings law. As we have noted in the past, It was . . . for the legislature to set [the] parameters [of the open meetings law.] In doing so it assumed responsibility for weighing the law's stated purpose against situations when the demands of efficient administration require a measure of confidentiality. We might or might not set some boundaries differently. Our clear responsibility is nevertheless to apply the ones established by the legislative branch of government. Donahue, 474 N.W.2d at 539. Chapter 21 clearly reaches only those meetings at which the governmental body deliberates or acts in a policy-making role. Because there are no facts in the record to support a finding that the negotiating committee had anything more than an advisory function, its March 2003 meeting was not required to be open to the public.