Opinion: Trumbull committee likely violated Open Meetings Act

Staff report

WARREN

The citizen Budget Review Committee selected by the Trumbull County commissioners to make recommendations on budgetary matters possibly acted illegally by meeting in private.

The Trumbull County Prosecutor’s office released an opinion Wednesday saying the committee, which issued its seven pages of recommendations a week ago, probably violated the Ohio Open Meetings Act.

The county commissioners sought an opinion on the issue after a local newspaper brought the issue to it regarding a May 23 committee meeting.

The opinion says the newspaper made a public- records request of the committee before May 30 and the committee went into a closed meeting May 30 to discuss the request.

The opinion says under the Open Meetings Act, a body such as this can meet privately with its legal counsel to discuss a public records request, but the committee’s legal counsel was not present.

A committee member, Jeff Goodman, is an attorney, but the committee apparently did not appoint Goodman or anyone else to serve as its legal counsel, the opinion says.

“Ohio law establishes that board members or employees who happen to be attorneys are not the ‘attorney for the public body,’” the opinion says.

The opinion also cautions this committee or others like it from closing a meeting to the public to discuss personnel matters or collective-bargaining agreements.

This committee spent a great deal of time reviewing collective-bargaining agreements and discussing changes they wanted to see in employee benefits.

“While the committee is likely a public body and subject to the open-meetings law, it does not have the statutory power to actually hire, fire, promote, demote or otherwise change the employment of any public employee,” the opinion says.

It says, therefore, the committee, which plans to have quarterly meetings in the future, should avoid meeting in private on the grounds of talking about personnel matters.

For the likely violation, the committee could be subject to penalties, and its actions could be ruled invalid if legal action were brought against the committee in court, the opinion says.