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Tallahassee Democrat

Wakulla County to clarify ‘emergency’ meetings

By Julian Pecquet • Democrat Staff Writer • March 18, 2008

CRAWFORDVILLE — Some Wakulla County residents want the county to improve its process for calling special or emergency meetings, which don’t allow as much advance warning to residents.

Notification “is a key component of the Sunshine Law,” said Pat Gleason, Gov. Charlie Crist’s special counsel for open government. “Obviously, if the public doesn’t know a meeting is taking place, they can’t attend.”

She said a week’s advance warning — along with notification to local media — is usually considered adequate, except for legitimate emergencies.

After years of complaints from residents who say they were barred from speaking at meetings or couldn’t tell what was on the agenda, the county adopted a new meetings policy last year. The county now produces more detailed agendas, but residents say the new policy was passed without their input, and they want a clearer definition as to what constitutes an emergency meeting.

The county has held three workshops since April, County Administrator Ben Pingree said, and staff have noted residents’ recommendations. Commissioners are expected to vote on the policy next month.

Things came to a head two years ago when the commission filed a complaint against Commissioner Howard Kessler after he refused to participate in a meeting he felt violated the Sunshine Law. Maxie Lawhon called an emergency meeting, providing only two days of notification, to discuss the resignation of then-county administrator Parrish Barwick.

Kessler refused to participate, and Lawhon asked the state to prosecute him for neglecting his duties. State Attorney Willie Meggs declined to prosecute, saying that while state law requires commissioners who are present at a meeting to vote unless they have a conflict of interest, lawmakers never established a penalty.

Gleason said case law suggests that an elected official who suspects a meeting is violating the Sunshine Law should not attend. Lawhon said that he saw nothing wrong with calling an emergency meeting to deal with Barwick — “we were fooling with his livelihood,” he said — but agreed the county needed to clarify what constitutes an emergency.

Reproduced courtesy of the Tallahassee Democrat.
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