Committee debates confidentiality, closed-session rules while screening complaints
Members disagreed over whether to discuss complaint details in open session and whether the screening step requires a closed session; a motion for closed session failed before the committee voted to treat one filing as 'abuse' and forward it to the auditor.
The full story
Early in the Sept. 1 meeting a committee member moved to go into closed session to discuss the character and professional competence aspects of the complaints; another member seconded. The motion did not carry. One member expressed concern that discussing particulars in open session would reveal identifying information; another member countered that the committee's statutory role is to screen complaints against clear definitions of fraud, waste, and abuse rather than to adjudicate or investigate, and that a county attorney's legal interpretation supplied earlier supported that screening could proceed in open session without violating confidentiality for matters already in the public record.
Sign up to keep reading.
Your free newsletter brings you what your city council, county, and school board discussed and decided.