INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY
by
Maryann Miller

 

Since last fall, a group of Winnsboro residents have been meeting about once a month to review the school facilities and make recommendations to the school board as to the need for remodeling or building new schools. For as many years as I have lived in the area, six and a half, concerns have been expressed about the condition of some of the old buildings. Most people seem to agree that the buildings are not aging well, and something needs to be done. What they can't seem to agree on, is what to do about the problem.

Some people, including WISD Superintendent Mark Bosold, have recommended building a new high school, at a cost of about about $20 million. Others have thought that amount of money could refurbish and repair all existing facilities and would be a wiser course of action. The people on both sides of the issue have had heated debates over the years that have unfortunately been less than diplomatic.

The idea to have a citizen's committee was a good one and came from the School Board's desire to make sure that the important decisions that have to be made about the school buildings are not made by just a small group of people. The School Board appointed the committee, which met first in September 2007 and was called the District Improvement Committee. "I'd forgotten that we started with that informal name," said current committee chair, Jim Barrett. "Until I was reviewing our minutes from the October meeting. Since then, we have evolved into being known as the WISD Facilities Committee."

Jim explained that the committee was formed with each School Board member nominating five people to serve. "So we started out with 35 members, but since then two have dropped out," Jim said.

He also said that the committee is working on a detailed plan to present to the School Board, but no date has been set for when this will be completed. They are looking at all the facilities and addressing the problems at each site, which is a time consuming endeavor.

Back in February, Winnsboro News Publisher Tom Pendergast wrote an editorial saying that the committee had disregarded the Open Meeting Act when he was not allowed to attend the meeting. In the editorial Tom implied that there was something underhanded going on, but Jim Barrett said that is unfounded. "This is what happened regarding that open meeting issue," he said. "When the committee first started, several members said outright that they would not be comfortable serving if the press, particularly Tom Pendergast, was allowed to attend the meetings. Unfortunately, he has a tendency to write negative things about people when he doesn't agree with them. That is a fact that we are all aware of.

"We did some research about the Open Meeting Act and found out that we could exclude the press from our meetings. So that day in February, Tom wanted to come in and I told him that we were not allowing the press in. He cited the Open Meeting Act, and I told him that did not apply. He asked what I was going to do, and I told him that we were not going to allow him in. So he left."

Jim Barrett consulted Texas State Attorney Greg Abbott about the Open Meetings Act and if it applied to the citizen's committee, and here is a summary of the outcome:

Position Paper on the Applicability of the Texas Open Meetings Act Related to the Activities of the

WISD Facilities Committee.

Prepared by: Jim Barrett , February 27, 2008

I have gathered information from three legal sources including staff attorneys for the Texas Association of School Boards, The Texas Attorney General’s office, several area attorneys and have reviewed several cases related to the Open Meetings Act.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s staff attorney, stated, “It appears the WISD Facilities Committee is not subject to the Open Meetings Act. To be subject to the Open Meetings Act all five of the following criteria must all be present.

(1) The body must be an entity within the executive or legislative department of the state;

(2) The entity must be under the control of one or more elected or appointed members;

(3) The meeting must involve formal action or deliberation between a quorum of members;

(4) The discussion or action must involve public business or public policy; and

(5) The entity must have supervision or control over that public business or policy.

The WISD Facilities Committee appears to meet criteria 1, 2, 3, and 4 but it does not meet criteria five and therefore is not governed by the Open Meetings Act.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s staff attorney referred me to Attorney General opinions GA–0232, GA-0361, H-467, H–438, and JM–331, and H-772. I read each one of these opinions. They all deal with various advisory committees, groups and boards working with elected school or university boards. All of these Attorney General Opinions base their opinion on the five criteria listed above. So long as any one of the criteria are not met the Open Meetings Act does not apply.

In a famous case involving the city council of Alpine, Texas with a verdict rendered in November 2006, the Texas Open Meetings Act was upheld as an enforceable law. Also upheld was the current practice of where the law applies and where it does not (the five criteria listed above).

In addition, case law also confirms my position. In Fiske v. City of Dallas ( Fiske v. City of Dallas , 220 S.W.3d 547, 551 (Tex. App.—Texarkana 2007, no pet).) a citizens advisory group set up to advise the city council was found to not be subject to the Open Meetings Act.

Conclusion

I have taken the position, as an individual and as the elected chairman of the WISD Facilities Committee that the Texas Open Meetings Act does not apply to the WISD Facilities Committee. This is not an action that has been confirmed by the committee and therefore any liability is mine and mine alone. I intend to maintain this position until directed otherwise by a recognized legal authority on the subject of the Texas Open Meetings Act.

In writing this article, it is not my intent to cause divisiveness over this issue, but just to present some facts that will allow people to draw their own conclusions as to whether this committee is acting contrary to the law.

More about the Open Meeting Act can be found on the Web site for the Attorney General