{"id":31870,"date":"2013-11-09T22:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-11-10T04:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=31870"},"modified":"2013-11-10T18:25:09","modified_gmt":"2013-11-11T00:25:09","slug":"jsdc-changes-policy-violated-open-rec-mtgs-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=31870","title":{"rendered":"JSDC Changes Policy, Violated Open Rec. Mtgs., Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JSDC\"<\/a>Jamestown (CSi, Jamestown Sun)\u00a0 – In an opinion issued Friday by the North Dakota Attorney General’s office, a January 30,2013 meeting of the Jamestown\/Stutsman Development Corp. Executive Board violated the open records and meetings law.<\/p>\n

The Jamestown Sun had requested the opinion on February 28, 2013\u00a0on four issues: whether the JSDC is a public entity subject to open records and meeting laws, whether the JSDC Executive Board made decisions during an executive session meeting on January 30th, whether a personnel evaluation for Connie Ova, CEO of the JSDC, conducted in executive session violated open meeting laws and whether the JSDC violated open records laws by not furnishing the salary information for Ova to The Jamestown Sun.<\/p>\n

The January. 30th executive board meeting was conducted in an executive session that excluded the public and press. Executive session meetings can be used to discuss proprietary information but the board can only vote in sessions open to the public and press.<\/p>\n

The opinion, issued by\u00a0 Attorney General, Wayne Stenehjem, ruled that the JSDC is a public entity because it receives public tax funds.<\/p>\n

The opinion said the \u201cJSDC admits, and a review of the tape of the executive session confirms, final action was taken by the Executive Committee during executive session.\u201d This is in violation of North Dakota open meeting laws.<\/p>\n

The attorney general\u2019s opinion also ruled that performing an employee evaluation during an executive session and withholding salary information violated open meeting and record laws.<\/p>\n

The Attorney General\u2019s Office ordered the JSDC to amend its minutes of the January 30 meeting to reflect all actions taken during the executive session and to furnish The Jamestown Sun a copy of Ova\u2019s employee evaluation along with a salary figure at no cost.<\/p>\n

JSDC President, Gary Rife says, \u201cWe have already changed our procedures.\u00a0 The last meeting and the employee evaluations conducted in an open meeting are an example of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riffe said the JSDC would comply with the attorney general\u2019s requests by Monday.<\/p>\n

The topic of the complaint was discussed during the JSDC Board of Directors November meeting as part of an amendment to the 2013 JSDC budget. The board noted the organization\u2019s legal expenses were over budget in part because of $4,000 spent in researching and presenting the JSDC response to The Jamestown Sun complaint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jamestown (CSi, Jamestown Sun)\u00a0 – In an opinion issued Friday by the North Dakota Attorney General’s office, a January 30,2013 meeting of the Jamestown\/Stutsman Development Corp. Executive Board violated the open records and meetings law. The Jamestown Sun had requested the opinion on February 28, 2013\u00a0on four issues: whether the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jamestown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31870"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31873,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31870\/revisions\/31873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}