Opinion ID: 1685227
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Closed Session Meetings

Text: The plaintiffs assign that the district court erred in determining that the Board did not commit a substantial violation of the public meetings laws by holding closed sessions during its August 14 and November 25, 1996, meetings. The Nebraska public meetings laws are a statutory commitment to openness in government. Grein, supra . The public meetings laws allow meetings to be closed only under limited circumstances. Neb.Rev.Stat. § 84-1408 (Reissue 1999). Any public body may hold a closed session by the affirmative vote of a majority of its voting members, if a closed session is clearly necessary for the protection of the public interest or for the prevention of needless injury to the reputation of an individual. § 84-1410(1). Closed sessions may be held for, but not limited to: strategy sessions with respect to collective bargaining, real estate purchases, pending or imminent litigation, discussion regarding deployment of security personnel or devices, investigative proceedings into allegations of criminal conduct, or evaluation of the job performance of a person when necessary to protect the reputation of that person, and the person has not requested a public meeting. § 84-1410(1)(a) through (d). In contrast, § 77-4928(3) of the Act states: The application [for wage benefit tax credits] and all supporting information shall be confidential except for the name of the company, the location of the project, the amounts of increased employment and investment, the result of the net benefit calculations, and whether the application has been approved. The plaintiffs argue that this confidentiality requirement applies only to the application itself and did not create an exception to the public meetings laws for the Board's decisionmaking process. We disagree. The Legislature holds the power to decide the scope of citizen access to governmental meetings. Through the public meetings laws, the Legislature committed state agencies, boards, and other public bodies to an open interaction between state citizens and state government. However, the Legislature retains the power to limit access to public meetings through provisions such as § 77-4928(3). The presence of the public meetings laws does not prevent the Legislature from later limiting the scope of those laws in specific situations, such as application reviews under the Act. In the absence of a constitutional claim, we do not judicially consider the Legislature's enacted limitations on public access to meetings. Statutory language is to be given its plain and ordinary meaning. See Haber v. V & R Joint Venture, 263 Neb. 529, 641 N.W.2d 31 (2002). A plain reading of § 77-4928(3) reveals that the Legislature determined that most of the information in applications under the Act should be kept confidential, without exception or limitation. The extent of protection of confidential information for potential applicants under the Act is a policy determination within the province of the Legislature. Although the district court erred in finding that Wasikowski waived the rights of all other plaintiffs by failing to object at the Board's November 25, 1996, closed session, we conclude that the court did not err in determining that the Board did not violate the public meetings laws when it went into closed session for the purpose of considering confidential portions of Nebraska Beef's wage benefit credit application at its meetings on August 14 and November 25, 1996.