The residents of Kosciusko and Attala County now have a new tool in ensuring they are kept abreast of local government activity.
House Bill 1116, which took effect July 1, prevents meetings called outside of a government agency’s regular schedule from flying under the radar of citizens.
Here’s what the law says:
All public bodies — municipal boards, county boards, school boards — must notify, either by email or fax, anyone who asks to be put on the notification list for when meetings of the body are called outside its normal schedule. Such notice has to be sent to the requesters at least an hour before the special called meeting is held.
Although it may be mostly media who ask to get on the notification list, anyone interested in personally following the deliberations of local government can ask to be included by filing a request in writing with the government agency in question.
A second provision of the law - requiring that the notice to be posted on the websites of government bodies - is not applicable to Kosciusko and other Attala County communities since they do not meet the population requirement of the law.
Still, if a government entity has the capability to do so, we encourage them to voluntarily post the notice online to their websites, facebook pages or twitter accounts and Instagram feeds. Some local boards already post not only notices, but also meeting agendas online in advance of regular meetings.
House Bill 1116 is a good law. It is designed to keep public bodies from circumventing the intent of the Open Meetings Act by calling special meetings they hope no one other than the public officials themselves will attend.
Before now, the only notice requirement for called meetings was to post it in the building where the public body normally meets. Unless a reporter or other member of the public happened to walk by during the often short time between the posting of the notice and the meeting, the meeting could operate, for all intents and purposes, as if it were a closed-door session.
To their credit, most local public bodies have been trying to be more transparent by letting the Star-Herald know when a special meeting has been called. But that information has not generally found its way to the citizens of Kosciusko and Attala County in a timely enough fashion to allow residents to attend themselves if they wished.
The whole purpose of the state Open Meetings Act is to ensure the public right — either on its own or through its surrogates in the media — to keep up with and participate in what its government is doing.
The new notice requirement on called meetings simply reinforces the principle that good government is open government.
