Marion violated open meetings act
Staff writer
More than two years after the fact, the state attorney general’s office has ruled that the City of Marion violated the Kansas Open Meetings Act when it met behind closed doors Feb. 6, 2023, to consider Janet Robinson’s nomination to become city clerk.
After an extensive investigation, including review of 178 pages of documents provided by City Attorney Brian Bina, the attorney general’s office concluded that the city failed to include all statutorily required elements in its motion to go into executive session.
The motion, first assistant attorney general Amber Smith wrote, listed an appropriate justification for a closed-door meeting — the privacy interests of non-elected personnel — but failed to include a required “statement describing the subjects to be discussed.”
The Record’s coverage of the meeting at the time included that the motion said the executive session would be to discuss the city clerk position but that the motion did not say in what regard it would be discussed.
Smith termed the motion “vague and generic.” She added that the violation was “technical” in nature but wrote that “even technical violations cannot be ignored.”
In her investigation, Smith wrote, Bina contended that the “exact language” of the motion was “inadvertently left out of the minutes.” Smith sought to review an audio recording of the meeting but found that the audio was “distorted and inaudible.”
“Because Mr. Bina acknowledges that the motion, as reflected in the minutes, fell short of compliance, we decline to pursue any formal enforcement action to resolve the matter,” she wrote. “However, we will report this violation in our annual report. We will also work with the city to ensure appropriate remedial action is taken to prevent this situation from reoccurring.”
Smith said the attorney general’s office would “continue to monitor this matter for compliance.”
Robinson’s nomination to become Marion’s city clerk despite having been asked to resign as city clerk 3½ years earlier in Florence was not revealed until after the executive session. When the council reconvened in open session, Mayor David Mayfield immediately turned to council member Zach Collett to make a motion, which he appeared to read from a computer screen, to hire Robinson.