The Enterprise has been covering Leelanau County since 1877, chronicling the lives of residents and visitors of the peninsula for 142 years.
Births, deaths, community efforts … you name it, we’ve covered it.
We enjoy sharing the people and their stories through feature stories. But hard news — particularly township, village, county governments as well as the local school districts— has been our bread and butter. To assist us, we have the Michigan Open Meeting Act (OMA) in our tool bag. Created in 1976, the act went into effect on Jan. 1, 1977, 100 years after the first Enterprise was established.
The OMA is considered a “sunshine law” that aims to make government processes and information more transparent and accountable to the public. It requires public bodies, such as boards, commissions, and committees, to hold open meetings when a quorum is present and when discussions could lead to a decision. The OMA also sets rules for public participation, closed meetings, and meeting minutes, and includes penalties for intentional violations.
OMA serves to put an end to the atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust of decision-making by public officials.
The law requires that public bodies conduct their meetings, make all of their decisions, and conduct their deliberations (when a quorum is present) at meetings open to the public. Any kind of process that equates to formal decision-making falls under the act and must be conducted in an open meeting.
Recently, we’ve had reason to question the acts of government bodies and whether they are operating in accordance with the OMA.
A Leelanau Township resident has alleged that a county committee violated OMA because their meetings were not posted and minutes were not produced.
The activity violated the law but was not prosecuted because it was “unintentional.”
In the time since, the committee corrected this action, posting meeting dates and minutes as required.
In May, the Solon Township Board held an “informal” meeting with members of the Cedar PolkaFest committee to discuss fees for the use of township parks.
The meeting was not posted in accordance with the OMA and no minutes were taken.
Most recently, the newspaper requested through the Freedom of Information Act (another tool) copies of notes passed during a meeting of the county Board of Commissioners.
The notes were passed between a commissioner and county clerk on three occasions as seen on the county’s You Tube feed. Our request to access these notes via the Freedom of Information Act yielded two of the three documents sought. The third was sent soon after.
None of the notes appeared to be of consequence. OMA does not explicitly prohibit the passage of paper notes, but it does prohibit private communications that rise to the level of engaging in deliberations toward rendering a decision regarding a matter of public policy without proper notice to the public. The same goes for electronic communications such as texts.
We will continue to defend the public’s right to know, using the tools available to everyone, not just the press.
