Despite support from AG, legislators once again barred from board executive session

A state senator is weighing her legal options after the state Board of Education, for a second straight month, denied her entry into an executive session on Wednesday, despite support from Oklahoma's attorney general.

Sen. Mary Boren, D-Norman, had been entry into an executive session at the board's June meeting. Such sessions are closed to the public. Two other lawmakers – Rep. Jacob Rosecrants, D-Norman, and Rep. Mike Osburn, R-Edmond --joined her in attempting to attend an executive session at the board's July meeting on Wednesday. The state board is led by state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, a Republican.

“I am in the making-sure-I-have-the-law-right stage,” Boren told The Oklahoman. “I am not in opposition to filing a lawsuit. It’s fair to say, I’m considering whether or not a lawsuit is the best course of action and if I have the resources to do it.”

The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has been clear that lawmakers should be allowed to attend at least some executive sessions, pointing to a section of the state's Open Meetings Act. The law reads: “Any member of the Legislature appointed as a member of a committee of either house of the Legislature or joint committee thereof shall be permitted to attend any executive session authorized by the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act of any state agency, board or commission whenever the jurisdiction of such committee includes the actions of the public body involved.”

Boren serves on the Senate Administrative Rules Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Appropriations and Budget Education subcommittee. Rosecrants serves on the House Education Committee and Osburn serves on the House Appropriations and Budget subcommittee for education and on the House Judiciary Committee.

An assistant attorney general sent a letter to Walters and the board earlier this month emphasizing that Boren was allowed to attend the executive session, and Attorney General Gentner Drummond was emphatic in a statement: “The law is clear that legislators have significant oversight authority. No elected representative of the people should be prevented from exercising that statutory power.”

Did the state board follow the Open Meetings Act?

The board had two executive sessions scheduled for Wednesday’s meeting. The first was to discuss whether Boren could enter the meeting. Rosecrants and Osburn were not named on the agenda. But the board brought all three lawmakers into the executive session to state their case as to why they should be allowed in. After that, Boren said, they were taken back to a holding room. They never made it into the small room where the board was meeting because of capacity issues.

The executive session lasted for one hour and 40 minutes. According to the agenda, the board was to discuss and possibly take action on Boren’s request. After that, the agenda said the board would vote to return to executive session to discuss other items, including teacher license suspensions and revocations.

Instead, the board voted to table the agenda item involving Boren. Then, without going back into executive session, they immediately began voting on the teacher licensing items. Boren suggested those votes could be nullified because the board didn’t follow its posted agenda.

“We are very concerned by what appeared to be a willful violation of the Open Meetings Act,” said Phil Bacharach, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office. “Our office will look further into the matter and take appropriate action.”

A willful violation of the Open Meetings Act carries penalties up to a $500 fine per violation and one year in jail.

Walters, speaking to reporters after the meeting, said he believed Drummond’s office needed to “give us some clarity” on whether the lawmakers can sit in on executive sessions.

“I’ve got left-wing Democrats like Mary that want to come in and make it where we can’t remove pedophiles from the classroom,” Walters said. “That’s what she’s wanting to do. She’s wanting to disrupt that process. We’re looking legally, and it doesn’t appear that she has jurisdiction. … She claims that she’s on a phone-call basis with the attorney general’s office and they’re telling her she does. We’ve requested specifics from the attorney general and haven’t heard from them.

“So, look, we just need clarity on the attorney general’s role, what their perceived role is with our agency, so we’re just going to go ask and say, ‘Let’s put this in writing, what do you see here, what’s your advice, what do you see your role is in advising folks?’ Again, are they on the phone with Sen. Boren every day? I don’t know. I know what she says, but we’ve just got to get clarity from them, because we want to make sure that everything we’re doing is clear, everything we’re doing is well within the law. We feel very confident in what we’re doing. That’s going to be our next step, is just to make that request, so we can get additional clarity on it.”

The letter sent from the attorney general’s office to the board earlier in July indicated that the board’s contracted attorney, Cara Nicklas, remained cool to the idea of allowing the legislators into the executive session. Rosecrants and Boren both indicated Nicklas remains a primary obstacle to them being allowed into the executive session.

"There wouldn't be any issues if your boss would just let people in."

Rosecrants said he told the agency’s lobbyist, Lindsey McSparrin – who escorted the lawmakers in and out of the executive session, that, “There wouldn’t be any issues if your boss would just let people in. When you put a wall up going to have a lot of people wondering why the wall is up.”

Rosecrants, a frequent critic of Walters when posting on social media, said he’d stayed away from state Board of Education meetings “because I didn’t want to make them overly political. This is literally my first time (to attend). I finally decided to go, and what a mess!”

Boren and Rosecrants each praised Osburn – who, like Walters, is a Republican – in joining them on Wednesday.

“It’s significant that Rep. Osburn was there, and it’s significant what Rep. (Mark) McBride and Attorney General Drummond (who also are Republicans) have done,” Rosecrants said. “It shows accountability is a bipartisan endeavor. It requires both sides to have authentic accountability.

“When you have somebody abusing power and they’re targeting a teacher, there’s not a school district or classroom safe from that targeting. Today, it was a teacher from Rep. Osburn’s district. You just don’t know whose district it is going to be next. It was significant Rep. Osburn showed up to observe how his teacher in his district was going to be treated.”

Having legislators attend executive sessions usually isn’t an issue. Two Republican legislators, Sen. Adam Pugh of Edmond and McBride, from Moore, have attended executive sessions conducted by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education during that board’s two most recent meetings. No concerns were raised.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Education board again denies access to closed session to legislators