Arizona Open Meetings Act
From Sunshine Review
Contents |
Which government meetings are open to the public?
All meetings of any public body are open to the public and all people are permitted to attend and listen. All legal action of public bodies must occur during a public meeting. These provisions include emails and telephone conversations.[1]
[edit] Meeting process
All public bodies must take written minutes or a recording of all their meetings, including executive sessions. The minutes, other than for the executive sessions, should include the date, time and place of the meeting, the members of the public body recorded as either present or absent, a general description of the matters considered, an accurate description of all legal actions proposed, discussed or taken, and the names of members who propose each motion. The minutes shall also include the names of the persons, as given, making statements or presenting material to the public body and a reference to the legal action about which they made statements or presented material. All minutes and recordings are open to the public.[1]
Members of the public may attend, listen to, tape, record and videotape open meetings, but they may not speak or disrupt.
Notice
The open meeting law requires at least 24 hours notice to the members of the public body and the general public in a way that all would have access, including posting at the office of the governmental body. The notice must also include the agenda to the best of the governmental body's knowledge.[2]
An open call to the public is an agenda item that allows the public to address the public body on relevant topics, even though the topic is not specifically included on the agenda. These are permitted, but are not required.
[edit] Exceptions
Executive sessions
Minutes of executive sessions must include everything that public meetings include, except accurate descriptions of all legal actions proposed, discussed or taken, because these should not be conducted during executive sessions.[1]
Public bodies may hold private executive sessions when the public is not allowed to attend or listen to the discussions, and the public body is not permitted to take final action. Votes and polls are also forbidden during executive sessions.[3]
The only situations in which a public body may hold a closed executive session are when discussing:
- Personnel (must provide 24 hours written notice to employee)
- Records exempt by law from public inspection
- Legal advice – with public body’s own lawyer(s)
- Consideration of pending or contemplated litigation, settlement discussions, negotiated contracts with the public body's lawyer
- And instructing its representative regarding labor negotiations
- International, interstate, and tribal negotiations
- Purchase, sale, or lease of real property.[3]
[edit] If violated
Any person affected by an alleged violation may commence a suit in the county superior court in order to require compliance with this act. Any fees incurred by an accused public body cannot be paid for with public money unless the public body has specific authority to do so in its definition. They can then take a legal action at a properly noticed open meeting approving the expenditure before debt sinks in.
For each violation the court may impose a civil penalty not to exceed $500 against a violator or someone who knowingly aids, agrees to aid or attempts to aid another person in violating. The restitution will be paid either to the general public fund or to the person affected who brought the case, at the court's discretion.
If the court decides that the violation was in an effort to evade the public or to purposefully withhold information from the public, the court may remove that person from office.
[edit] Relevant legal cases
- See also: Court cases with an impact on state FOIA
Here is a list of open meetings lawsuits in Arizona. For more information go the page or go to Arizona sunshine lawsuits.
(The cases are listed alphabetically. To order them by year please click the icon to the right of the Year heading)
We do not currently have any pages on litigation in Arizona. To add some see our Sunshine litigation project page.
[edit] External links
[edit] References
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