In a decision issued this week, the Supreme Court overruled the Freedom of Information Commission’s (FOIC) interpretation of the FOIA and ruled that a gathering of several members of a city council that did not constitute a quorum to discuss business that will be subsequently taken up by the full council was not a meeting and not subject to the open meeting requirements of the FOIA.
That case, City of Meriden v. Freedom of Information Commission, et al., SC Docket 20378, 2021 WL 952887, _____ A.3d ____ (3/12/2021), involved an unnoticed gathering of the four leaders of a twelve-member city council (the majority and minority leaders and their respective deputies) with the mayor and retiring city manager to discuss the upcoming search for a new city manager. During the gathering, the members agreed to submit a resolution to the full council to create a city manager search committee and drafted a resolution for that purpose. After an appeal by the editor of the Meriden Record Journal, the FOIC ruled that the gathering constituted a “hearing or other proceeding of a public agency” under General Statutes § 1-200 (2) and was, therefore, a “meeting” subject to the open meeting requirements of General Statutes § 1-225 (a).
The Appellate Court subsequently concluded that the gathering was not a “hearing or other proceeding” because it did not involve an adjudication. That decision was appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court started by looking at the text of Section 1-200 (2) and noted that there are three distinct statutory definitions of “meeting”: (1) “any hearing or other proceeding of a public agency,” (2) “any convening or assembly of a quorum of a multimember public agency,” and, (3) “any communication by or to a quorum of a multimember public agency . . . .” General Statutes § 1-200 (2). While the second two categories require a quorum to constitute a meeting, the first category, “a hearing or other proceeding,” does not. The question was whether the gathering of four members of the twelve-member council to discuss council business and draft a council resolution was a “hearing or other proceeding” of the council.
After looking at a number of dictionary definitions, the Supreme Court determined that the Appellate Court too narrowly construed the phrase “hearing or other proceeding” to include only adjudicatory proceedings. The Supreme Court concluded that a smaller group of an agency could be empowered to preside over matters that are not adjudications such as holding hearings to gather information for use by the entire agency. If empowered to take official action such as an adjudication or a public hearing, the gathering of those members so authorized would constitute a “hearing or proceeding” of the public agency requiring compliance with open meeting requirements regardless of lack of quorum. But in the Meriden case, the council members who met to discuss and prepare a resolution were not empowered to take any action on their own and were, therefore, not conducting a “meeting” under the definitions of the FOIA.
In rejecting the FOIC’s position that the gathering should be treated as “a step in the process of agency-member activity,” the Supreme Court found that such an interpretation would disrupt the orderly and efficient functioning of government by having the practical effect of making all gatherings of any public officials with the public, staff or members of state executive or legislative branches subject to open meeting requirements. We believe this to be a welcome clarification.
The decision did not address other kinds of gatherings that are expressly excluded by the FOIA from the definition of “meeting” such as a caucus of members of a single party serving on a public agency even if constituting a quorum of the agency.