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City attorney warns Lake Forest Park council to avoid 'reply‑all' serial meetings
Summary
City Attorney Kim Pratt told the Lake Forest Park Committee of the Whole June 22 that substantive reply‑all emails and long social‑media threads can create a prohibited "serial meeting" under the Open Public Meetings Act; she advised routing follow‑ups through the chair or staff and storing committee documents on shared drives for public‑records access.
City Attorney Kim Pratt told the Lake Forest Park Committee of the Whole on June 22 that councilmembers should avoid substantive reply‑all email chains and multi‑member social‑media threads that could be evidence of an illicit "serial meeting" under the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA).
Pratt said a serial meeting occurs when a majority of the governing body engages in a sequence of communications that show a collective intent to take official action outside a noticed public meeting. She advised that merely receiving information is not an OPMA violation but that discussing city business—even informally—can be considered action if it leads toward a decision.
The clarification followed multiple hypothetical scenarios Pratt had presented. In one, a constituent's email to the whole council posed no OPMA problem by itself; however, when a councilmember replied all with substantive content and others began responding, the email chain risked crossing into an impermissible serial meeting. Pratt recommended that councilmembers disengage from such threads and direct follow‑up through the chair, mayor, or city staff.
Pratt also reviewed another common scenario: responses on public social‑media posts. She said individual replies by two councilmembers usually do not create OPMA issues so long as a quorum is not involved, but long threads can unintentionally involve multiple members and become problematic. Private one‑on‑one messages to a constituent, she added, are generally permitted when they do not involve a quorum.
Councilmembers raised practical follow‑ups. Semra Riddle asked whether reply‑all about scheduling counts as substantive business; Pratt suggested that scheduling‑only messages are less likely to be treated as action, but recommended that a staff coordinator handle scheduling whenever possible to reduce risk. Josh Rosenau asked whether storing subcommittee documents on a shared drive satisfies public‑records discoverability; Pratt recommended giving the city clerk access or ensuring materials are kept in an organized, searchable location.
Pratt emphasized that the council's governance manual change excluding advisory ad hoc committees from OPMA notice requirements does not remove the need to preserve documents or to avoid communicating in ways that create the appearance of a majority acting outside public view. She closed by urging caution and offering to answer further questions.
The council did not take formal action on OPMA policy at the June 22 meeting; the attorney's presentation was informational and intended to guide members' future communications and document‑retention practices.
