That Pesky Open Meeting Law Again

I noticed something subtly new on the Maplewood website today. In the past, when there have been closed sessions for the city council to discuss legal matters, we've usually had a guessing game to figure out which lawsuit was being discussed, for example by looking up the biographies of the attorneys involved to figure out their specialties (labor law, land use, etc.) and comparing those to the known city lawsuits.

For example, you can still see the agenda of the 6 PM closed session of January 22nd, which simply says as its purpose: "Discuss Pending Litigation with Pam VanderWeil, Chuck Bethel, H. Alan Kantrud." The other 5 PM closed session on the same day similarly identifies its purpose: "Discuss Pending Litigation with John Baker and H. Alan Kantrud."

Today, for the first time, I see the header for the upcoming closed session identify the topic: "Closed Session - City Council - Discuss Pending Litigation,Le vs City of Maplewood: Chuck Bethel, H. Alan Kantrud, Julie Fleming Wolfe." I think that this specificity was missing for this meeting the last time I looked at the city meeting calendar.

Why the change? Maybe someone recently took another look at the open meeting law (Minnesota Statute Chapter 13D). Court decisions have allowed limited attorney-client privilege exceptions to the open meeting law, in order to permit confidential discussion of legal strategies about threatened or pending cases. The legislature's guide to the open meeting law states (p. 8),

In order to close a meeting under the attorney-client privilege exception, the governing body must give a particularized statement describing the subject to be discussed. A general statement that the meeting is being closed to discuss pending or threatened litigation is not sufficient.

In other words, each one of those past meeting announcements/agendas that just identified "pending litigation" as the topic appears to be a violation of the open meeting law.

How many violations? Here are the four specific instances I can find still on the Maplewood website just now, at least before someone goes back to change them (something we've seen this administration do before):

January 22, 2007, 6 PM
January 22, 2007, 5 PM
January 8, 2007, 5 PM
December 18, 2006, 5 PM

I tried to find examples of closed meeting agendas from the previous councils and the previous city attorneys, but the city only has agendas back as far as 2005 and in that year there don't appear to be any closed meetings. I guess we didn't used to have so many lawsuits that needed discussing.

Edit, 4/5: A December 11, 2006, special meeting perhaps needs to be added to the list as well.