Carthage council holds Sunshine Law training with attorney general's office

Jun. 20—CARTHAGE, Mo. — Carthage City Council members, Mayor Dan Rife and city department heads and officials took mandatory training Thursday on Missouri's Sunshine Law. The training follows a number of complaints the attorney general's office said it has received recently.

Jason Lewis, general counsel with the Missouri attorney general's office, led the session.

In a number of instances, Lewis gave what the state office recommends for public officials based on its reading of the Missouri Open Meetings/Open Records Act, but many of the questions city officials had remained open because there was no case law on the issue.

The council is working to impeach Rife, having recently fired former City Administrator Greg Dagnan, in part because they refused to put on the council agenda a series of six resolutions or ordinances giving the council more power to fire and suspend city employees, changing the whistleblower policy in the city's personnel manual, and creating an "anti-targeting ordinance."

The proposals were first brought up in a meeting April 23 by council member Tiffany Cossey and six other council members, including four who were first sworn into office April 9.

Cossey had drafted the ordinances for a special meeting held April 29, but Rife blocked their placement on that agenda, saying the city code required the city attorney to draft ordinances and that then-city attorney Nate Dally had found that the proposed ordinances as written violated state law, the city code and the city charter.

Council members called for a special meeting May 10 to talk about these proposals, but Rife again refused to put them on the agenda, citing Dally, whose last day as city attorney was May 10.

Council discussion on May 10 about items that were not on the agenda were among the reasons the attorney general's office insisted on the mandatory Sunshine Law session with the council.

In a letter to the city last month, the attorney general's office said: "During the meeting, a number of items were discussed and votes taken on items that were not reasonably subsumed within the topics identified on the agenda, such as the repeal of certain City ordinances as well as the adopting of other City ordinances," the letter states. "There was no indication on the tentative agenda that the City intended to discuss City ordinances in any manner. After a number of objections by the mayor, council members, and the public, the City tabled further considerations of these items until the May 14, 2024 meeting. While our office finds it significant that the City tabled further votes on the implementation of these ordinance repeals and adoptions, those items were nevertheless discussed without sufficient public notice. Additionally, these matters were not small or procedural but concerned matters of significant public interest."

That letter also said the attorney general's office is "concerned" about the volume of Sunshine Law complaints it has received — nine between June 2023 and May 2024.

When acting City Administrator Traci Cox asked about council members talking about something that the mayor has decided would not be on the agenda, Lewis said he viewed that as "an internal governance perspective, and each elected member needs to do what's best."

"The way our office thinks about this is when you're having a quorum that's talking about it, that's when you get into Sunshine Law notice and agenda issues," Lewis said. "My understanding is the way most city governments work is anyone can add something to the agenda and it's for the agenda maker to decide how we're going to do this or no, we're not going to do this. That's really for the body to figure out on their own and to have good rapport with each other to function well and cohesively."

Cossey said she's talked to "a number of attorneys who have weighed in on this, and they believe a tentative agenda is exactly that."

"And we have the mayor who is refusing to put things on the agenda that should be on there," Cossey said. "They've had a lot of people requesting this, and they're illegally blocking this and going with the conclusion of a former city administrator and former city attorney. It is the opinion of several attorneys that I've talked to that we can put it on there because the word tentative is not interpreted. I understand the attorney general's office has a position on this, but there have been several attorneys who have said that we are legally authorized to put that on the agenda because the word tentative and we are being improperly blocked."

There has been no ruling that Rife's decision to keep items off the council agenda was illegal, although it is one of the items in the impeachment charges against him.

Lewis said there wasn't any case law on this issue and the attorney general's position is that communities should "err on the side of putting things on the agenda."

"I appreciate your opinion and I know you're here just to give education and not a legal opinion, but as you know, this specific issue has been an issue for us because our city is in turmoil because of a situation where we are," Cossey said. "The reason I want to clarify it is because we have a reporter in the audience, we have some people who are doubtless going to be posting on Facebook about it and if we aren't clear with the position, they're going to say the attorney general's office says you can't put this on the agenda, which is not true."

Lewis and the council also discussed public records and emails between council members and city officials and what can or should be released to the public before the meeting adjourned.

The council's next regular meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Tuesdayat Carthage City Hall on the east side of the square.