Valley Sentinel PO Box 144 Spring Green, WI 53588 editor@valleysentinelnews.com October 16, 2024 Village of Arena Board of Trustees 345 West Street Arena, Wisconsin 53503 Board members— Upon guidance of our legal counsel, I’ve been advised that the Village of Arena Board of Trustees are unable to convene in closed session for agenda item 4. “Convene to closed session pursuant to WI statue[sic] section 19.85(e), for the purpose of Deliberating[sic] or negotiating the purchasing of public properties, the investing of public funds, or conducting other specified public business, whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session, specifically to discuss the continuation of the Fire Protection and EMS Service Agreement with the Town of Arena and District 1 EMS proposal[.]” Without getting extremely technical in the body of this memo, the notice for a meeting of a governmental body’s closed session must be specific. It is not sufficient simply to cite or quote the relevant statute permitting closure. There must be a description that sufficiently describes the intended subject of the closed session. A description was included in the notice, but our legal counsel advises us that this description is simply not good enough. It is also not clear that the closed session would be legal even if the proper notice were issued. The courts have explained that legally sufficient description must be detailed enough that a member of the governmental body, or a member of the public, or a court, would be able to tell from the description whether the purpose of the closed session actually satisfies the statute. The burden is on the governmental body to provide enough information to show that the closure is really justified. This is not the only standard that must be met, but it is a minimum. The standard may be higher, for example, if the importance and public interest in the topic under consideration is high, or if a better description can be offered without much burden to the governmental body. But in all cases, the description must be good enough to show that closure is warranted. In this case it isn’t. Merely “discussing” the continuation of an agreement is not something that generally requires a meeting to be closed. The courts have emphasized that “required” means actually necessary, not just helpful. And closure is not required for an entire session when only parts of it actually merit closure. It may be that there are parts of discussing the continuation of the agreement, such as settling upon a negotiating strategy, that could legitimately require closing the meeting to the press and public — however, the Village did not specifically state this — and it is not necessary to remove the people from all discussion of the issue, which is what the notice says. And if the notice was meant to reflect something more specific, it was the obligation of the board to set that out sufficiently. As it stands, the need for closing the meeting is not readily apparent, and so the notice is not good enough to allow the meeting to be closed.1 1
For example, the AG has said in its helpful open meetings law compliance guide that the board and its attorney may want to remedially review, the specificity required of a notice for a closed session entails making clear which of several reasons for exemption given in a statutory subsection actually is being utilized. Thus, where Wis. Stat. § 19.85(1)(c) allows governmental bodies to use closed sessions to interview candidates for positions of employment, to consider promotions of particular
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