Association Responds to New Legislation
The County Judges and Commissioners Association of Texas (CJCAT) is working with the Office of the Attorney General to obtain approval of open government curriculum to help officials meet the requirements of Senate Bill 286 passed by the 79th Texas Legislature.
Officials subject to the Texas Open Meetings Act and the Texas Public Information Act who are elected or appointed after Jan. 1, 2006, have 90 days within which to complete the required training. Current officials and those who take office before Jan. 1, 2006, have one year – until Jan. 1, 2007 – to fulfill the requirement.
While the Office of the Attorney General will provide training, the statute authorizes other entities to offer training courses that have been reviewed and approved by the attorney general, said Tom Kelley, spokesman for the attorney general.
“I expect that we will have an approved course that can be offered at any judges and commissioners conference before the deadline,” said CJCAT general counsel Jim Allison.
The statute calls for a one-hour educational course on the Open Meetings Act and a one-hour educational course on the Texas Public Information Act for a minimum total of two hours of training, and a maximum of not more than four hours. This is a one-time-only training requirement; no refresher courses are required.
The open records portion of the new law allows public officials the option to designate a public information coordinator (PIC) to attend training in their place so long as the designee is the person primarily responsible for the processing of open records requests for their governmental body, said Missy Cary, chief of the Open Records Division at the Office of the Attorney General.
Open Government Training and Curriculum 2000
The timing of this new legislation coincides with current plans to revise the Curriculum 2000 program, which includes a course on the Texas Open Meetings Act.
The Curriculum 2000 Program was adopted by the CJCAT in 1992 to provide an advanced study of county government by county commissioners. The program provides for certification upon completion of a 64-hour course of studies that includes four phases. The open meetings course is included in Curriculum 2000 Phase III. The current curriculum does not include the Public Information Act.
“We anticipate a module on the Public Information Act to be added to the Curriculum 2000 program during the revision,” said Stacy D. Hoefling, Extension program specialist with V.G. Young Institute of County Government, Texas Cooperative Extension. The Institute is working in partnership with the CJCAT and the Texas Association of Counties to revise the Curriculum 2000 modules.
The CJCAT will advise those involved in the revision process to ensure that the modules covering the Texas Open Meetings Act and the Texas Public Information Act comply with standards set forth by the attorney general, said Bell County Commissioner Richard Cortese, chairman of the CJCAT Education Committee.
Pending approval of these two modules, county judges and commissioners should be able to obtain the required training during the CJCAT regional and state conferences during 2006 and meet the deadline, Cortese said.
Hoefling said the Institute plans to offer the required training at its February 2006 conference, as well.
The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin will incorporate the training into its biennial Seminar for Newly Elected Judges and Commissioners, allowing new officials to meet the 90-day deadline, said Barry Bales, assistant dean for professional development.
The law goes into effect Jan. 1, 2006, Cary said. Consequently, the attorney general’s office is still working on its approval procedures and will most likely wait until Jan. 1 to begin the approval process.
The approval will be curriculum-biased, Cary emphasized, not “people-biased,” meaning the attorney general will approve the material, only, not the person who serves as instructor.
As part of the process, the attorney general’s office will be developing a certificate of course completion to give to officials who are trained through the attorney general’s office. The attorney general’s office will decide whether or not to dispense those certificates to other entities providing training, or advise those entities to generate their own certificates, Cary said. Either way, the participant must receive a certificate and make it available for public inspection.
While there is no penalty for failure to receive the training, the attorney general’s office is cautioning officials “that a deliberate failure to attend training may result in an increased risk of criminal conviction should they ever be accused of violating the Open Meetings Act or Public Information Act.”
“It’s obvious to me that public officials need a little more training,” said Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, who filed the legislation. “Many are completely unfamiliar with open meetings and open records (laws), and they unknowingly violate the law.”
Wentworth discussed the legislation during the annual South Texas educational conference conducted in late June. The attorney general’s office receives some 11,000 requests per year from government officials seeking guidance pertaining to disclosure of records to the public and media, he said.
The majority of the problems arise with cities and school districts, said John Fuller, assistant attorney general for the County Affairs Section of the Office of the Attorney General. However, open government legislation is generic, “so everyone is affected when the act is amended.”
A detailed explanation of SB286 can be found at http://www.oag.state.tx.us/.
Additional Open Meetings Legislation
Fuller briefed officials gathered at the South Texas conference on other legislation affecting open meetings:
Senate Bill 690: Commissioners court may recess to the next day without posting any further notice. If business continues through the second day and the court needs to recess to a third day, the court must post notice. A catastrophe may prevent a posted meeting from convening; the court may reconvene in 72 hours without further notice.
Senate Bill 1133: A county that operates a Web site must post a notice of the commissioners court meeting on that site, in addition to the courthouse posting. Counties over 65,000 must also post the full agenda packet. If after a good faith effort the posting fails due to technical problems, the meeting is not rendered invalid.
House Bill 2381: Meeting notices can be posted on the county’s Internet Web site. The notice must still be posted at the courthouse during normal business hours, in addition to the Web site posting.
Julie Anderson, Editor
