McNamara said she didn’t find it unusual that board members were spending almost four hours more meeting informally than formally — the official Feb. 22 meeting took slightly more than two hours. The practice is commonplace for the board, which is a public body.

“I think that’s reality anywhere, in any public body,” McNamara said. “Our votes are in public. No one can hide from how they vote on an issue, but discussions are very different.”

The press and public aren’t allowed to attend the board’s informal meetings, which McNamara said is a necessary restraint.

“You give yourself a chance to have candid conversations,” she said. “It gives me the chance to ask stupid, dumb questions without finding myself quoted in the paper the next day for asking a dumb question.”

Mike Hiestand, attorney and legal consultant to the Student Press Law Center, said the board’s actions wouldn’t be allowed in almost any other state but Michigan. The center is a legal assistance agency that educates high school and college journalists about their First Amendment rights.

“Every other board of regents in the country seems to be able to get their business done without going behind closed doors to do it,” he said. “I don’t know what makes MSU’s Board of Trustees such a special case or what comments are so especially idiotic that could only be said behind closed doors.”

Although the Michigan Open Meetings Act requires public bodies to conduct almost all business during open meetings, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in a 1999 case that a Michigan constitutional provision exempts the board from the act.

The initial suit was filed in 1993 during the university’s presidential search, which ended in the appointment of former MSU President M. Peter McPherson. Several newspapers filed the suit because they felt the university was breaking open meeting laws.

The Michigan Supreme Court sided with the board, ruling that the constitution only required the board to meet in public for what they refer to as a formal session, said Charles Barbieri, a Foster, Swift, Collins & Smith P.C. attorney who argued against MSU in the 1999 case.

“I suspect the logic the board is using now is that the dinners and other acts they conduct out of the public’s eye are permissible if labeled informal,” he said.

East Lansing Mayor Vic Loomis said the East Lansing City Council falls within the state’s Open Meetings Act and an informal meeting similar to the MSU Board of Trustees’ dinner meetings would be impossible for City Council members.

“If we have three of us, for a quorum, we’d have to take minutes, roll call and follow normal meeting procedure,” he said.

Loomis said executive sessions, in which the City Council can discuss property acquisitions or litigation, are the only instances the council can meet privately.

Although the MSU Board of Trustees sometimes discuss agenda items in closed sessions, Trustee Joel Ferguson said the board’s actions still aren’t illegal under Michigan law.

“Let’s say the Open Meeting Act did apply to the board, and let’s pretend these informal dinners were a way to get around the Open Meeting Act, then we’d have an issue,” he said. “But that’s not the case.”

Barbieri agreed with Ferguson, saying that under the 1999 ruling, he said, the board isn’t breaking the law.

Changing the law also could be difficult, Barbieri said.

“There isn’t any higher power in the state,” he said. “If the Supreme Court reversed its decision or if the Supreme Court finds the board exceeded its authority, I think those are the only two ways the matter gets corrected.”

Hiestand said there would need to be a public outcry before the board’s actions are examined. But that hasn’t happened yet.

“At least for right now, Michigan citizens aren’t up in arms about it,” he said. “But in other places they’ve determined that’s not the way to conduct business.”

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said few people have raised issues with the board’s meeting policy.

Informal meetings, she said, have been a fabric of MSU board meetings since she can remember.

“It’s a chance for the board and the officers to have an informal time within the meeting schedule,” Simon said. “It’s sort of like a set of your peers going out to dinner after a meeting. But there are no decisions made and it’s relatively an informal time.”

McNamara said she has been doing public policy work for more than 30 years, and informal meetings are simply the reality of the system.

“If you want to know where things are getting done, go out to Mitchell’s Fish Market on a Monday or Tuesday night. Half the room is filled with legislators talking about issues,” she said.

“That’s reality. It’s not immoral, it’s not unethical, there’s nothing wrong with it and it works.”

The morality of the system is something Hiestand questions.

“There’s reasons why we want to hold our public officials accountable when they come together as an official body,” he said.

“It’s the public’s business, the public is paying for it, has put them in these positions and has the right to know what they’re doing.”

While McNamara said there would be less controversy if the system was completely open, that system just isn’t feasible.

“Frankly, the reality of how things get done versus the way you’d perhaps ideally like them to be done are quite different,” she said.