Some members of the MSU Board of Trustees said the board is not doing anything wrong by having closed work sessions the night before its monthly meetings.
But the justifications they provided for closing those sessions left us with more questions than answers.
The board holds closed work sessions the day before their formal meeting, in which the two committees talk about the issues on the agenda. They also hold a dinner with MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon that same night, which the board claims is purely a social event.
Trustee Scott Romney said the board can close the work sessions because the meetings do not include the full board and that it doesn't reach quorum at the meetings. Quorum is more than half of the eight-member board.
But according to the Michigan Open Meetings Act, subcommittees, or portions of the board, are still considered public bodies.
Therefore, if the subcommittees of the board are meeting and reach quorum required for the subcommittee, it's considered a public body and those meetings should be open.
The board might also justify the closed work sessions because of a 1999 Michigan Supreme Court decision. The court ruling said the Board of Trustees does not violate the Open Meetings Act by closing meetings when it's searching for a new university president.
We believe this decision doesn't allow the board to close all meetings, just the ones in which it's discussing presidential searches.
Since the board is not discussing a presidential search at these closed work sessions, the reasoning seems to fall flat.
Another issue is the dinner the board has with Simon following their closed work sessions.
The board claims the dinners are strictly social and no agenda issues are discussed.
Does the board expect us to believe that for more than two hours, all it talks about are social affairs? That it doesn't once talk about the issues it will be facing the next day, which it just talked about for hours in work sessions?
We don't buy it.
Let's say, hypothetically, we believe the board's dinners with Simon are just social events.
The board spent 24 minutes discussing parts of the agenda that involved spending university money at its Jan. 13 meeting. But it spent more than two hours at dinner the night before.
Seriously.
However, if the board is completely honest about dinners being strictly social events and no debate or conversation of the agenda goes on, we should be worried that the full board can discuss an entire agenda in 24 minutes.
If the full board can make important decisions in less than half an hour with no sign of debate, how can we expect it to be making informed decisions?
Don't we deserve better from our elected board?
What we need is a board that is completely transparent. A board that doesn't shut anyone out at its meetings.
We deserve more.
