In the waning hours of this year’s regular legislative session, our state Legislature passed a major change to Minnesota’s Open Meeting Law, even though the provision received extremely limited public discussion.
The original bill that carried the change had only one Senate hearing, was discussed for six minutes, and had no companion bill in the House of Representatives.
There were no House hearings.
While some legislators (primarily Rep. Peggy Scott, a Republican from Andover) attempted to stop the provision from advancing at the end of session, it ended up in an omnibus bill that hit the floor in the last hours of Monday evening, and was ultimately passed.
The change that occurred pertains to the “remote meeting” provision of the Open Meeting Law. Going forward, local governing bodies such as city councils will be able to meet almost entirely remotely, with all but one member attending from non-public locations. The change essentially takes the remote, emergency meeting exception that applied during the COVID era and allows it to become a new normal, if local governments so choose.
This will degrade local government responsiveness, and imperil local news coverage.
Minnesota’s Open Meeting Law was passed in the 1950s to ensure that members of the public would have physical access to the locations where elected officials meet to conduct business, and also to have notice of where such meetings were being held. This had a dual purpose of allowing the public to observe meetings in progress, as well as to allow citizens to interact with officials in person before and after those meetings, so that they could ask questions or conduct discussions. This also held a large benefit for watchdog members of the press, who could ask after-meeting follow-up questions, without officials being able to dodge those questions by not returning phone calls or correspondence.
During the 1990s, as telecommunications technology advanced, the Open Meeting Law was modified to permit circumstances in which officials could attend meetings on a remote basis, so long as certain requirements were met. Those requirements included ensuring that meetings were broadcast; that remote attendees provided notice of where they would appear from; and that such attendees appeared from a public place like a library, rather than from a private location like their home (unless certain exceptions, such as a medical situation, applied).
This had benefits:
First, the notice provision gave citizens (and the press) information about where remote attendees would be, so that they could meet with them in person, just as they could otherwise do at the regular meeting location.
Second, the mere existence of the “public place” requirement continued to encourage a culture of in-person government meetings where public officials had to directly encounter constituents and reporters.
The only time when Minnesota law allowed unlimited remote meeting attendance from non-public locations was in the event of a pandemic or other declared emergency, When COVID hit in 2020, those circumstances kicked in, and most government meetings were then conducted remotely, with officials participating from (non-public) home locations.
The move to “all remote” meetings during COVID was an understandable necessity to deal with the pandemic, but it caused collateral problems. For instance, our organization heard repeated citizen complaints about degraded public engagement with elected officials. Citizens lost the ability to encounter their elected representatives in person, and could contact them only via phone call or e-mail. Too many of these messages went unanswered, we were told. With no “in person” option available, citizens reported that concerns were ignored, and questions went unaddressed. This was particularly frustrating for residents of localities that continued to meet in an all-remote format (due to the long tail of the COVID executive orders) while surrounding jurisdictions went back to regular meeting procedures.
With the Open Meeting Law change that was just passed by the Legislature, these kinds of problems are bound to recur. Now, elected officials will be able to conduct remote meetings on a virtually unlimited basis from non-public locations, if they so choose. Citizens (and reporters) who were frustrated by their inability to connect with elected officials in the immediate aftermath of COVID will find that the same problems will recur now, since the Legislature has removed the guardrails in the Open Meeting Law that formerly held such problems at bay.
When the Legislature returns soon for a special session to complete its budget work, it will have an opportunity to undo the Open Meeting Law problem it created in the rush to finish the 2025 session. The Legislature should investigate how to permit an appropriate amount of flexibility for remote meeting participants, while reinstating guardrails designed to prevent local officials from disappearing behind the virtual curtain for good.
Matt Ehling is a board member of Minnesotans for Open Government, a non-partisan, all-volunteer nonprofit organization.
