FAIRHOPE, Ala. - In some states, gatherings of members of a governmental body in numbers less than a quorum are called “serial meetings,” “walking quorums,” “hub and spoke meetings” and “musical chairs.” Some state statutes and case law have prohibited the use of such gatherings to circumvent open meetings laws in those states.

A similar situation arose in Fairhope last week when three City Council members gathered in groups of two with the city attorney. Those gatherings that occurred just prior to the March 11 termination appeal hearing of the former human resources director involved legal advice about the upcoming meeting.

Each council member said because they met in groups of two – one less than a quorum – there was not an Open Meetings Act violation.

On March 31, the Alabama Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on such a “serial meeting” situation involving the Montgomery County Board of Education.

“This case presents a question of first impression for this Court,” the appellant Clay Slagle stated in seeking oral argument before the state’s highest court. “It presents a novel question of law involving the important public policy issue of transparency in government in general and the specific mandate of the Alabama Open Meetings Act that governmental bodies in the State of Alabama deliberate in public with notice to the public.”

The court granted oral argument, which will occur at Jacksonville State University at 9 a.m. March 31. The court occasionally meets in such locations outside Montgomery for oral argument in cases where it thinks there is public interest.

The appeal is by a Montgomery citizen, Clay C. Slagle, who sued the seven members of the MCBE for alleged violations of the OMA. The board met on Nov. 16, 2009, in staggered gatherings of members less than a quorum to discuss issues involving the superintendent that came up in an open meeting the following day.

“These private meetings held one day before the public meeting were staggered in an effort to circumvent the requirements of the Alabama Open Meetings Act,” the appellant’s brief states. “The Board schemed to ensure that no more than three of them were in the room at one time in an effort to escape the definition of ‘meeting’ in the OMA and, therefore, circumvent the AOMA requirements of notice and openness. The only question before this Court is whether those gatherings constitute ‘meetings’.”

The appellee school board argument, upon which it prevailed at trial, is that the statute requires a quorum for such “meetings” to exist and therefore there was no violation.

“The OMA is simply inapplicable unless a quorum of the entity’s members exist,” the school board argues in its brief.

Slagle, in addition to seeking a ruling that the school board “gatherings” constituted a “meeting” and should be covered by the OMA, also seeks a ruling that the “rotating in and out of public officials at a meeting cannot circumvent the OMA.”

It was that rotating in and out by Fairhope council members at the gatherings on March 11 that is at issue in the current Alabama Supreme Court case that could make such actions illegal.

“It was clear the only reason to form these sub-groups was to avoid the media and the public,” one of the Montgomery school board members said at trial as quoted in the appellant’s brief. “I think we met in those groups in those type of settings so we could specifically avoid the media, and I think that’s wrong.”