02-25-2015 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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RELEVANT LINKS: !PAD 09-020. O'Keefe v. Cater, No. Al2- 0811 (Minn. Ct. App. Dec. 31, 2012) (unpublished decision). The commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Administration has advised that back -and -forth email communications among a quorum of a public body in which official business was discussed violated the open meeting law. However, the opinion also advised that "one-way communication between the chair and members of a public body is permissible, such as when the chair or a staff sends meeting materials via email to all board members, as long as no discussion or decision-making ensues." In contrast, an unpublished 2012 decision by the Minnesota Court of Appeals concluded that email communications are not subject to the open meeting law because they are written communications and are not a "meeting" for purposes of the open meeting law. The decision also concluded that even if the email messages were subject to the open meeting law, the substance of the emails in question did not contain the type of discussion that would be required for a prohibited "meeting" to have occurred. The decision noted that the substance of the email messages was not important and controversial; instead, it related to a relatively straightforward operational matter. The decision also noted that the town board members did not appear to make any decisions in their email messages. Because this decision is unpublished, it is not binding on other courts. In addition, the outcome of this decision might have been different if the substance of the emails had related to something other than operational matters, for example, if the substance of the emails were attempting to build agreement on a particular issue that was going to be presented to the town board at a future meeting. In 2014, the open meeting law was amended to provide that "the use of social media by members of a public body does not violate the open meeting law as long as the social media use is limited to exchanges with all members of the general public." Email is not considered a type of social media under the new law. The open meeting law does not define the term "social media," but this term is generally understood to mean forms of electronic communication including websites for social networking like Facebook, Linkedln, and MySpace as well as blogs and microblogs like Twitter through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, and other content. It is important to remember that the use of social media by city councilmembers could still be used to support other claims such as claims of defamation or of conflict of interest or bias in decision-making. League of Minnesota Cities Information Memo: 11/14/2014 Meetings of City Councils Page 20