MANSFIELD, Ohio – The Richland County Board of Commissioners held an emergency meeting and executive session on Monday with no notice to Richland Source, and a last minute notice to at least one other media source.
In an email that Richland Source was later able to obtain from Board of Commissioners Clerk Stacey Crall, “The Richland County Board of Commissioners is holding an executive session today, Monday, July 13, 2015 at 10:45 a.m. The topic of the executive session is to discuss details relative to security arrangements an emergency response protocols for a public body or a public office, if disclosure of the matters discussed could reasonably be expected to jeopardize the security of the public body or public office.”
A second email attached said, “I am sorry my error, I forgot to mention in the previous email the meeting [of] the Board of Commissioners started at 10:45 a.m. is an emergency meeting.”
Crall is substituting for Belinda Fulton, assistant clerk at the Richland County Courthouse, who normally sends agendas. Fulton is out of the office this week, according to an auto-response message via email.
According to the Ohio Attorney General’s Ohio Sunshine Laws Open Government Resource Manual, under “Types of Meetings and Notice Requirements,” regular meetings, special meetings, and emergency meetings are listed.
Regular meetings are those held at prescheduled times. A special meeting is defined as anything other than a regular meeting and requires at least 24-hour notice to media outlets that have requested notification of such events.
The manual noted, “An emergency meeting is a type of special meeting that a public body convenes when a situation requires immediate official action. Rather than the 24-hours advance notice usually required, a public body scheduling an emergency meeting must immediately notify all media outlets that have specifically requested such notice of the time, place, and purpose of the emergency meeting.”
Executive session is defined as a conference between members of a public body from which the public is excluded. Nine reasons for adjourning to executive session are listed, including discussing security matters as listed in the email.
An email from Commissioner Marilyn John stated that no action was taken at this meeting.
A video released by the online publication “Photography Is Not a Crime” (PNAC) of the events of July 9 indicated an issue with the commissioners’ use of executive session may have led to the altercation between Michael Skidmore and Richland County Courthouse building security.
On July 9, Skidmore and other local citizens attended a meeting of the Richland County Commissioners. The unedited video showed the group arriving and being told that they would not be allowed to stay long as the commissioners planned to go into executive session at the beginning of the meeting.
Skidmore and other attendees noted that the agenda they had received did not list a planned executive session.
According to Dan Tierney, spokesperson for the Ohio Attorney General’s office, “A public body sets its own rules regarding notice. The statute suggests the provisions for advanced notification, but the specifics are the body’s own rules.”
In response to an email request for the commissioners’ rules regarding notification, Crall noted that the body refers to Ohio Revised Code 121.22.
O.R.C. 121.22 is referred to as Ohio’s Open Meeting Law.
The video showed Skidmore and other attendees waiting to enter the meeting. At one point, a waiting attendee noted the time was 9:35 a.m. and said that the commissioners were already in executive session.
Tierney noted that all meetings that have an executive session must begin and end in open session.
