The Jan. 27 meeting that NSCS Chancellor Stan Carpenter and the WSC presidential search committee held has raised questions as to whether it abided by the Open Meetings Law of Nebraska.

Dr. Jeryl Nelson, a professor in the School of Business and Technology, a faculty senate and Wayne School board member, said Monday that the meeting should have been posted in the usual, customary sites to inform the public it was going to be assembled.

If no one but the committee were present, Nelson said, handouts should have been made available for the public.

“A closed session is only for needless injury to an individual and protection of the public interest,” Nelson said. “It [the meeting] should be public if the candidate qualities was the subject.”

The Wayne Stater filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Feb. 4 asking for copies of any minutes recorded during this meeting. The Nebraska State College System (NSCS) denied the request.

“There are no records that ‘recorded the meeting’ nor were minutes taken,” Kristen Petersen, General Counsel & Vice Chancellor for Employee Relations for the NSCS, wrote in reply to the request.

“There is no reason to take any formal minutes. It’s just a discussion among the committee members,” NSCS Chancellor Stan Carpenter said Tuesday about the Jan. 27 meeting.

Carpenter said the next committee search meeting tentatively will be held on March 16. At this meeting, there will be an update on the pool of candidates from Charles Bunting, the search consultant from Storbeck/Pimentel.

The Open Meetings Law states that every meeting of a public body shall be open to the public in order that citizens may exercise their democratic privilege of attending and speaking at meetings of public bodies.

According to the Nebraska Open Meetings Law, meetings are defined as: “all regular, special, or called meetings, formal or informal, of any public body for the purposes of briefing, discussion of public business, formation of tentative policy, or the taking of any action of the public body.”

The following is excerpted from The Nebraska Open Meetings Law:

Any public body may hold a closed session by the affirmative vote of a majority of its voting members if a closed session is clearly necessary for the protection of the public interest or for the prevention of needless injury to the reputation of an individual an if such individual has not requested a public meeting. The subject matter and the reason necessitating the closed session shall be identified in the motion to close.

The vote to hold a closed session shall be taken in open session. The entire motion, the vote of each member on the question of holding a closed session, and the time when the closed session commenced wand concluded shall be recorded in the minutes. If the motion to close passes, then the presiding officer immediately prior to the closed session shall restate on the record the limitation of the subject matter of the closed session.

Any member of any public body shall have the right to challenge the continuation of a closed session if the member determines that the session has exceeded the reason stated in the original motion to hold a closed session or if the member contends that the closed session is neither clearly necessary for (a) the protection of the public interest or (b) the prevention of needless injury to the reputation of an individual. Such challenge shall be overruled only by a majority vote of the members of the public body.

Nelson also questioned whether a lunch session held by the NSCS Board of Trustees at its Jan. 20 meeting complied with the Open Meetings Act.

“There is a chance communication would happen during the lunch, which is not valid under the act,” Nelson said. “It is unclear why [there is an executive session lunch].”

The Board held executive sessions on Nov. 6 and 7, 2014, as well. The Board executive session with lunch on Nov. 6 was held, according to the minutes, to discuss personnel and litigation. On Nov. 7, there was a Board executive session with breakfast.

The meeting on Sept. 6, 2014, held no executive breakfast or lunch, but instead, a Board of Trustees executive session was scheduled on the agenda.

Petersen did not respond to phone calls on Tuesday for comment for this article.