The Nevada attorney general's conclusion that the Douglas County School Board violated the state's open-meeting law should serve as a reminder for other publicly elected bodies.
The details are important.
The agenda for a July 6 school board meeting listed one item: a closed session for the annual review of Superintendent Pendery Clark. The closed meeting is allowed by law.
The board ran into trouble, however, when it came out of the closed meeting some three hours later, convened in open session and voted to extend Clark's contract for another year.
C. Wayne Howle, senior deputy attorney general, noted that the agenda neither listed a contract extension as an item for consideration nor said the board would be taking action on it. Therefore, the vote was in violation of law.
The only penalty for the school board is that it will have to do the vote over again.
We commend the Attorney General's Office for enforcing Nevada's open-meeting law. It's one of the most important guarantees to a democratic government.
Nevertheless, a couple of things nag us about this issue.
Howle recommended no action against the Douglas board because "it is possible the board may have relied upon mistaken advice of counsel" about the open-meetings law.
This is no excuse for elected officials. We're not talking about some arcane intepretation of an obscure law. There's not much simpler a rule than: You can't vote on something not on the agenda.
Veronica Hulsey, a candidate who brought the open-meeting allegations against the board, also accused it of failing to notify her of the meeting, even though she requested board agendas in advance.
While the board is required to provide agendas to anyone who asks, the Attorney General's Office did not offer an opinion because there are "conflicting statements" on the facts of the dispute.
However, it did recommend that the school board pay close attention to the requirements of the law and "assiduously adhere to them under all circumstances."
That bears repeating for all elected officials: Know the opening-meetings law, then follow it.
