BISMARCK — The legality of a school choice task force being allowed to meet behind closed doors was called into question Wednesday, Aug. 14, during a hearing of the state Education Committee in Bismarck.
During the 2023 North Dakota legislative session,
Legislative Management — which functions as a legislative assembly between sessions — called upon the interim Education Committee to conduct a study of “school choice” funding models, which would inform legislation to allocate state funding to families looking to home school or enroll students in private schools.
Committee Chair Sen. Michelle Axtman, R-Bismarck, said the task force is exempt from open meeting laws.
Axtman created the task force to carry out the study in response to the order from Legislative Management.
Despite having met three times, however, the task force’s existence was news to some committee members, including Rep. LaurieBeth Hager, D-Fargo.
“Who’s on the task force, when the task force has been meeting, if there are minutes from the task force, if this is public meetings and how those are conveyed — those are some of the questions that have been on my mind this past month,” Hager said.
Axtman passed the question to North Dakota State Superintendent Kirsten Baesler, who said she and Axtman collaborated with the governor’s office to come up with a list of stakeholders who should be included in the process.
Baesler also contracted the
Hunt Institute
to facilitate the study while Axtman invited teachers, administrators and other legislators to join the task force. Baesler and Axtman are both members.
Hager then asked why open meeting laws don’t apply to the group.
Rep. LaurieBeth Hager, D-Fargo.
Contributed
“It applies to school boards. It applies to most entities in the state, but not this particular task force that would restructure the entire education of the state of North Dakota?” Hager asked.
“As a legislative task force, we relied on Legislative Council’s guidance,” Baesler responded in the hearing. Legislative Council does legal research for North Dakota’s government entities.
John Bjornson, Legislative Council director, said although the task force was portrayed as a legislative committee group, it isn’t.
“It had nothing to do with us,” Bjornson said. “The DPI was going to report on what they had found to the education committee, but they had no directive from the education committee. They had no directive from the Legislative Council or Legislative Management to do any business related to the committee’s study. It was just an entity appointed by the superintendent.”
Bjornson said the council’s attorney at the hearing wasn’t fully aware of the situation, clarifying that inviting legislators doesn’t necessarily mean the meetings were subject to open meeting laws unless a quorum of the committee was invited to the task force.
Department of Public Instruction Public Information Officer Dale Wetzel said the task force was formed as a subset of the interim Education Committee.
“It (the study)is not supervised by the Department of Public Instruction,” Wetzel said.
Axtman confirmed the Department of Public Instruction is paying the Hunt Institute to facilitate the study.
“I trust the experts,” Axtman told Forum News Service after the hearing. “Because it is not legislatively funded, it is not legislatively directed, that is why they directed me that it (open meeting laws) does not apply.”
According to Jack McDonald, legal counsel for the North Dakota Newspaper Association and North Dakota Broadcasters Association, “State law makes it clear that such groups as subcommittees, task forces or any other similar types of groups that are acting on behalf of a public entity are also subject to the state’s open meetings and open records laws.”
North Dakota Century Code 44-04-17.1 states that all public entities are subject to open meeting laws, including “any task force or working group created by the individual in charge of a state agency or institution to exercise public authority or perform a governmental function.”
Peyton Haug joined The Forum as the Bismarck correspondent in June 2024. She interned with the Duluth News Tribune as a reporting intern in 2022 while earning bachelor’s degrees in journalism and geography at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Reach Peyton at phaug@forumcomm.com.
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Publish date : 2024-08-16 05:08:00
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