According to the audit released by the state office earlier this week, the board did not make public the results of some votes taken during closed meetings, including the approval of negotiation for a land purchase on Jan. 12, 2012; the placing of a house built by students at Franklin Technology Center on the market for sale on March 27, 2012; and the approval of a settlement agreement with a vendor on April 21, 2014.
The board also failed to give final approval in open meetings to contracts that had received initial approval in closed meetings, including the superintendent's contract and several construction contracts following the 2011 tornado, auditors noted in their report. The audit gave no further details about when those actions took place.
Representatives of the district and board said in their formal response to the audit that they make closed votes public when requested. But the auditor's office said that practice alone doesn't satisfy the requirements of state law.
"'Made public' requires more than waiting for a request to be made," auditors said in their report. "Furthermore, because the general public would not have sufficient information to know what occurred in closed session to make such a request, disclosure only upon request defies the intent of the statute."
In a follow-up interview with the Globe, Deputy State Auditor Harry Otto said it's the responsibility of a public body to disclose information, not the obligation of the public to ask for it.
"It's understandable that a public body goes into closed session to, say, discuss a land purchase, but after the negotiation is complete and the contract is signed, there is a requirement that the board say, 'We purchased Tract X for X dollars,'" he said. "That is what we call 'made public,' and it's not up to the public to wait and wait, and then ask the question, 'Did you ever buy this land, and what were the terms?'"
Superintendent C.J. Huff said after the audit's release that district officials believe current practices to be adequate. He said some of the votes targeted in the audit report — particularly the two related to the purchase and selling of real estate — were likely not made public because of continuing negotiations at the time for nearby properties.
"We don't necessarily disagree that we can do better," he said. "We just feel like we're meeting the minimum requirements of the Sunshine Law."
Some board members also defended their practices, saying that votes taken during closed meetings are accessible within 72 hours when requested.
"I think there might be a perception that closed sessions are not available to the public, and they are — you just have to request them," board President Anne Sharp said.
Norman Rouse, the board's attorney, said his opinion after having studied the Sunshine Law is that the board is meeting its requirements for disclosure of information.
"If they want to do more, that's their choice," he said. "If they chose to post it on the website the next day, it wouldn't bother me. If they wanted to post them to a door, that's fine with me, too. If they want to make them part of the consent agenda — whatever avenue the school board would want to take to make it public would be fine by me."
Huff said the district plans to convene a small group of community members to provide feedback on ways to improve its response to Sunshine Law requests.
"We'll look at the current practice (and) get their perspective on how to make that information more available to them and in what ways they'd like to see that," he said. "State auditor aside, we want to be able to present information that the community understands and in a way that they can have access to it."
But those steps may not be necessary because the means by which the district releases closed votes could be very simple, according to Otto: Give a report of those actions during open meetings.
"Then everybody gets to see that because those minutes are published," he said.
Not everyone agrees that the district's current practices are best.
Jean Maneke, lawyer for the Missouri Press Association, of which the Globe is a member, said there is no case law that has specifically addressed this issue. But she said she understands the audit's position that some type of proactive action to disclose information is needed.
"The presumption is that this (information) should only be kept closed when it absolutely fits under an exemption," she said. "I can see the argument that it's an affirmative duty to let the public know that those materials are available to them."
Jeff Koch, a parent and school board candidate, raised the audit's issues with Sunshine Law compliance during a public meeting with administrators Tuesday. He said in a follow-up interview with the Globe that there is nothing in state law that bars the district from doing more than the minimum requirements for the sake of transparency.
"I think it's in the district's best interest to make these closed votes part of the record after the fact," he said. "They should just publish anything that happens in closed session that has a vote."
Board member Debbie Fort, in an interview with the Globe after Tuesday's meeting, said her personal viewpoint is that the board could do more to make closed votes public while still following the law.
"(The auditor's) directive to us, I think, was very clear: It's public, you post it," she said. "I believe that in 72 hours we could post it on the website, just like we post meeting notices and everything else."
Joplin resident Anson Burlingame said during Tuesday's meeting that he thinks the audit report could suggest to some that board members are hiding information by failing to publicly disclose it.
"The insinuation is there is a lack of transparency in closed sessions in terms of what's being released to the public," he said. "Was there a conscious decision by the board to withhold that (information)? I don't think that's going on, but if it is, I'd sure like to hear about it."
Sharp and Huff later dismissed that notion.
"Certainly this board has never, in the seven years I've been here, done anything out of character with what the voters expect" during closed meetings, Huff said.
Said Sharp: "I don't feel like we're hiding anything, but there's a perception that we are, and we just need to figure out how to overcome that perception. And that's why we're putting that panel together. ... I'm hopeful that when we get the input and recommendations from the panel that they kind of help us go forward so the community doesn't feel like we're hiding something from them."
The audit also criticized the school district for failing to document how fees charged for Sunshine Law requests were calculated. State law allows a maximum of 10 cents per page plus an hourly fee for research and copying public records, but requests filled before November 2013 didn't show how the district came up with its $18-per-hour fee.
The district also didn't adequately log Sunshine Law requests to ensure proper compliance, the audit noted.
Huff said those issues have already been addressed. The district now has on file its justification for the $18-per-hour fee, which he said is an average of the salaries and benefits of administrative clerical staff. It also has created a system to track requests.
©2015 The Joplin Globe (Joplin, Mo.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
