Meeting Behind Closed Doors
(Part 2 in a 3-part series)

While the overarching purpose of Arizona's Open Meeting Law is to ensure that meetings of a public body "be public meetings," the statute does provide for private gatherings as well. By a majority vote of its members constituting a quorum, a public body may conduct an executive session, from which the public is excluded.

An executive session may be conducted "only for the following
purposes":

• Discussion or consideration of employment, assignment, appointment, promotion, demotion, dismissal, salaries, discipline or resignation of a public officer, appointee, or employee of the public body.
• Discussion or consideration of records which the law exempts from public inspection.
• Discussion or consultation for legal advice with the public body's attorney.
• Discussion or consultation with the public body's attorneys to consider its position and instruct the attorneys regarding pending or contemplated litigation.
• Discussion or consultation with the public body's representatives regarding negotiations with employee organizations over employee salaries, salary schedules, or fringe benefits.
• Discussion or consultation for international and interstate negotiations, or for negotiations by a city or town with representatives of a tribal counsel or Indian reservation.
• Discussion or consultation with the public body's representatives regarding negotiations for the purchase or lease of real property.

The law imposes limits on the authority to conduct private meetings by more than simply limiting the reasons for an executive session. It also holds that during an executive session, a public body may not take legal action-a collective decision, commitment or promise by a majority of that public body.

Moreover, a public body must post a notice of an executive session within twenty-hours prior to the meeting. The notice must be accompanied by an agenda of the general topics to be discussed at the executive session; such an agenda, however, "shall not contain information that would defeat the purpose of the executive session."

Likewise, the public body must keep minutes of any executive session. While the minutes must record where and when the session was held, the members in attendance, and a general description of the matters considered, they need not present the detail required for minutes of public meetings.

The Open Meeting Law expressly requires that discussions made at an executive session (as well as minutes of the session) "be kept confidential," and "[t]he public body shall instruct persons who are present at the executive session regarding" this confidentiality requirement.

In the final installment of its series on Arizona's Open Meeting Law, In Brief will discuss the consequences the legislature has prescribed for officials whose actions violate the law, as well as the way in which the public body may correct such actions.

Published in the Fall 1998 Edition of In Brief