Council to Be More Open about Closed Sessions

Posted by Terry Francke, General Counsel | Jan 20, 2009 | Legal Issue: Open Meetings | 0 |

OPEN MEETINGS — The St. Helena Star reports that the City Council has adopted a new set of guidelines aimed at shedding more light on what happens during its closed session meetings.

Under a resolution adopted Tuesday, the council will:

Allow for more disclosure and opportunity for public discussion of closed session items.
Include more details on its agendas relating to closed session items.
Mention during open session any matters that are anticipated to be on future closed session agendas, and determine if those talks can be held in public.

The discussion of future closed session items will become a regular agenda item at the end of each meeting.

About The Editor

Terry Francke, General Counsel

Terry Francke has a 39-year history of helping journalists, citizens and public officials understand and use their First Amendment and open government rights. With CalAware, Francke has authored comprehensive and authoritative guidebooks to California law on access to government meetings and public records and the news gathering and publication rights of journalists. Focusing on these issues in public forum law, he supervises CalAware's legislative and litigation initiatives; conducts workshops on legal compliance; helps design public records audits; supports local sunshine ordinance drafting efforts; writes CalAware Today, a blog on current developments and proposals in the law and best practices; and answers countless queries by phone and e-mail from citizens, journalists, public officials and employees, and lawyers. Francke previously served 14 years as executive director and general counsel to the California First Amendment Coalition, after a 10-year post as legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. He has served as an advisory panel member to the National Center on Courts and the Media; taught journalism law at the Department of Communication at Stanford University; and served as an expert contributor to the 1994 major revisions to the Ralph M. Brown Act and the 2004 ballot proposition making open government a basic right of citizens under the California Constitution. Francke is a 1967 graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a 1979 graduate of McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. Prior to his legal career, Francke worked as a weekly newspaper editor and in military and local government public affairs positions.

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