 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing today and it will be posted to our archive page for you to watch later at your convenience. And I will show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our recordings. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do spread the word about our show on Encompass Live with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. For anyone who might not be from Nebraska who's watching this show or recording, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries. So we are the state library in Nebraska. So we provide services and resources and training and grants to all types of libraries in the state. So there will be shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries. Public, academic, K-12, corrections, museums, archives, really anything and everything. Our only criteria is that it's something to do with libraries. We have book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that come on the show sometimes talk about services and things we're doing here for the commission, but we bring in guest speakers from across Nebraska and across the country, even to do presentations. And today, we have a Nebraska presenter and a very Nebraska-centric topic show for today. So if you are not in Nebraska Library watching this either live or recording, do be aware. Everything we're talking about today is Nebraska focused only. Check with your own state for anything different, anything that you might have questions about. But we're going to talk about the Nebraska Open Meetings Act. And Scott Childers, who is the executive director of our Southeast Library system, is going to guide us through that. Good morning, Scott. Hey. And we did this a show like this about a year ago, actually. But things do change. Little tweaks sometimes happen to the laws and whatnot in the state. And it's always good to have a refresher of these things. So we are back again to talk about the Nebraska's Open Meetings Act. So I will hand it over to you, Scott, to take it away. Okay. Get this going. There we go. Yep. There we go. All right. So, first of all, disclaimer, I am not acting as any attendees legal counsel and the information presented they should not be construed as actual legal advice or their promise of such in the future. The goal of today's presentation is to make you aware that such legal requirements exist. If actual legal advice sought for specific reasons, you should contact the city attorney or other such legal professional. So, without a way. Yep, what is it. So what is this open meetings act. So it states state statutes that require public policy be done in a transparent and public manner. The cars are currently located in state statute in these sections there's a link at the very end of the slideshow they'll take you directly to the full text of the act. As Christa mentioned, this is a Nebraska state statute states have their own versions and sometimes they call it something else like Florida's is known as the Sunshine Act, and other such things but this is the Braskens. So who has to follow this law, all almost all governmental councils boards and other groups must comply with open meetings act including governing and advisory library boards. So, village board city council township board school boards, also library boards. I do know there's a couple of libraries are completely under 501 C three that is rare. But so they may not have followed this completely. Also, your friends and foundation groups. Are you not going to be under this, unless there is a quorum's worth of your library board who are also at those meetings. We'll get more to quorum a little bit later on. Okay, I will also make a mention that during this presentation the term public body will be used to cover all variations of council boards and other groups that follow this. It's the text in the law, and it's a lot faster to be going down all the various boards. Just try to say public body. Thank you all for talking about this that you mentioned that the links at the end of the slides. Everyone, they will get this the link to the slide presentation, along with the archive later as well. So, take notes if you want to but don't you don't need to try and scribble down everything here and try and get those links later, you'll have the slides and the links afterwards with the archive. Yeah. Yeah, if you have questions like Christa said from in the questions or chat or whatever section is there open for you so please feel free to ask questions along the way. Okay, so one of the first things about the open meetings act is you have to let people know that a meeting is being held. You'll see in the heading of the slide section 84 1411 is where you find the full text of it. Here's the synopsis. The public is given a reasonable advanced notice about the meeting. Here's the kicker. They don't define reasonable. Right. That's it just reasonable. Usually I'm finding 10 days is a good rule of thumb. However, you would want to look at what your own city village or whatever is doing to announce their board meetings. Tradition, because that has set the expectation for what the city does. I've seen somewhere it's like a full 14 days other it's 10 business days. But you do want to give advance notice. There was a court case a few years ago where, like, 10 o'clock PM before the meeting date that is not reasonable. So it has to be a period of days not hours for this to apply. There also was a recent change in how you put this out in communities of a population or 5000 or less. This notice consists of putting a notice in the newspaper that covers the community, or posting the physical notice in three towns within the community. Right. So if you're a smaller town, you have options. Some of our communities don't really have a newspaper that hits frequently enough in the community. I know lots of our small town newspapers have cut down to maybe even once a week. But it's not enough notice. So that's why you have this leeway. If your population larger and 5000 people, then the notice must be placed in a newspaper that covers the community this when you in fact, either last year or the year before so fairly recently. The notifications of where and when the doses were replaced should be included in the meeting minutes. So you have a record of how you advertise the meeting. More on advertising it. The notice of the meeting shall include time and place of the meeting. Agenda of the meeting or a statement of where people can find the up to date agenda. I'm sure about what the agenda has to have a little bit later on this posted agenda can be changed up 24 hours before the start of the meeting. Right. So you can make alterations even after it's posted. There are some communities where the agenda changes very frequently so they are using that statement of where you can find the full agenda. Quite often. Alright, so let's talk about the agenda. So, what, when you have these meetings. A citizen has to be able to, to have a rough idea of what's being talked about so they can decide if they should attend that meeting, or give someone's feedback. What we have here is the agenda item being listed as getting books doesn't give much information to someone outside of the library circle. What that means. But if you had something like grant proposal to build up financial literacy collection. That would be enough. Right. It's fairly specific. You're doing something out of the usual norm as far as your business, day to day business. If you have enough information so it says okay that's a topic I might be interested in, or have feedback on, or whatnot. Another change that kicked in just, just in July of last year. The first class and larger shall place on their websites. The agenda of the meeting, no later than 24 hours before the start of the meeting and this agenda must continue to be available on the website at least six months. Okay, so that is one of the newest changes in open meeting act. I'm going to talk a little bit about emergency meeting but before I get into that I do want to mention you can have special meetings, but they still fall under that know a reasonable notice, and the agenda special meeting should be one topic. And I don't have a slide for that, but you could do a special meet special meeting, but it still falls under those same rules as before. Emergency meeting. So this is different public body can hold an emergency meeting without reasonable public notice. The reason for the meeting has to be stated in the minutes, and the only business allowed in this meeting shall pertain to the emergency matter. It has to be an emergency. It has to be something that is super time sensitive. You don't even have time to call a special meeting on like, hey, the, the library had major catastrophic damage at the library board has to be to address a couple of issues with that to approve some sort of cost to, you know, disaster containment or something, right. But as we've had, yeah. And the complete minutes of this emergency meeting shall be made available to the public no later than the next regular business day. Okay, so you're not fooling around with emergency meetings trying to hide stuff. It is, we have to decide right away. No time to do all the notice, noticing, but we still need to get word out about what we talked about what we decided the next day. So I know sometimes I've heard, usually it's the city level village board or whatever, and they'll have an emergency meeting, but it's really just a special meeting, and they go through the full process, but they call it an emergency meeting because it's out of schedule. Legally, a special meeting and an emergency meeting or two separate things. So just to let you know about that. Before I move into virtual meetings, were there any questions so far. Yeah, no. Nothing has come in yet. But anybody has any questions comments thoughts anything you wanted to know more about anything you're confused or concerned about regarding open meetings act I know we've had. I get questions regularly, pretty regularly about things that are open meetings act related. So I definitely type into the question section. Just what someone didn't want to actually wait. Okay, now of course as soon as I say things, you know, wait. I want a little more clarification about that. Keeping the minutes or the agenda for six months that you had mentioned. That that is on the website. That's only in communities over 5000 have to do that. If you're smaller library and you want to do that that's great. But that is now state law that the agendas have to be there for at least six months after the meeting. I said that is one year old change. So we don't know if there's going to be any refinement or anything on that. Some of the other things have changed have already been refined through state law. That was so new. How this actually works. Right right and it is just for the ones over 5000 which is most of our libraries are not that big actually. It doesn't apply to most of you. Is there any rules about how long they need to keep things like in paper that whole document retention, or are you going to be getting that's a whole different topic, but. My rule of thumb is forever. It doesn't have to be at the library if there's like a city safe place for documentation. So it's good to have these historical things explaining what happened back in 1947 when something went down yet. Yes. Especially, there have been a couple of cases where libraries are dealing with some building things, and they wanted to see what that group of board members decided way back when, because it's causing maybe some issues now or. Or try to find the vendor who provided something. So that way they can see if that vendor still exists and they can get the same thing. Right. Yeah. Oh yeah, I suggest minutes readily available versus kind of an archive format where they're tucked away somewhere. That's up to you. If you're talking about that way anyone can just walk in and get a copy of it. I'd say no longer than seven years, if that. Yeah, I would hold on to your minutes and agenda packet. Just basically plan on doing that forever in some format. Yeah, and that's something that you could do some sort of a scanning project to if you don't have a paper, a place to keep all this paper that you know years ago before electronic start getting things just scanned in and on to a drive somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. So some questions other ones come to know the agenda, putting on the library website. Does it have to be on the library website or on the is the city's website sufficient. That is a great question. So, and that is going to vary by community, because I know some libraries have great access to the city website and others have not, but they have their own. So, I think the key part with that is, or there's two things to consider with this one, how often are you going to change that agenda once it's put up. I mean, can it get put up and stay relatively the same so you don't have to constantly tweak it a bit. So, what is the norm, right? It's like, if the norm is every other department in the city has their stuff on the city website, the library should probably be there as well. And that, you know, like I know I there are some cities where it takes a month to get something up on the city website. Maybe with this new state law things will change if it's a agenda or something it will get fast tracked but so those are things you'll have to consider about in your community. You know, those with over 5000 population. I would not suggest using something like a Facebook or social media does account in the spirit of this, this particular law. So it'd have to be an actual website. So look at what you have access to what the norm is for the city. And kind of make sure it's consistent is the main thing consistently it's within the same place. So it doesn't say has to be on the library's website just as it says it has to be online, the law has to be online. And I think generally people will start just referring to the city because that's where all the other notices are. Yeah, but we're we're so early at that so really, it's a gas. I've seen many cities where every board of every city department has is listed in the one big thing on the city's website and that's just where they all go. And that's, that's the perfect. Great. All right. Another question about emergency or executive sessions. Okay, someone says it is my understanding that an emergency or executive session is held only for disciplinary acquisitions etc. Is this correct wages for example is not a reason. Okay. Do you mean, I want to clarify just do you mean the question ask her like deciding if some if they're going to give staff a raise or something that is something that should be just been a regular agenda of a board meeting and that would not be an emergency should not be needed for that. Yeah, and we're actually talking about two different things. We're talking about a market of our two different set things. Yes, you're right. And I will talk about closed sessions a little bit later on which I think it would be more of the wages and stuff but yes emergency and close sessions are two different things. And I do know some people kind of throw them together, like I talked about people throw emergency and special together. And according to state law, we have to consider them two different types of things closed session is part of another meeting. And we'll get into more in just a little bit on that, but the emergency. It has to be time sensitive and if wages are time sensitive someone really messed up. Yeah, it should not be a discussion now is literally like we have to have this decided in a matter of days, as opposed to waiting a couple of weeks. Wait until the next meeting. Yeah, like you said, act, you know, tornado came through and now what we need to do or water pipe broke in the library we need to rush and figure out what's what we need to approve funding to bring people into clean etc etc so emergency, you know, the title emergency meeting. Yeah, yeah. So, we'll talk about the closed session. Some kind of session which isn't really a thing but the closed session we'll talk about that a little bit more. And if you have more questions after that. Feel free to ask them and we'll dive into that a little bit more to. Okay. That's all we have for now, go ahead. Okay, so let's talk about virtual meetings. This is also fairly new. Back with the pandemic, Rick, it's put in executive order, allowing some sort of virtual meetings. And then as the pandemic round down, legislature put in these rules that way it can continue because people did find it useful to do virtual meetings instead of everyone gathering in some places. Or, you know, some where they would all meet wasn't able to hold folks over tool meetings would allow more people to participate. However, there are some guidelines. There are like, there's a group of boards and such that could do one type of meeting for library boards. So one of these conditions. One, the purpose of the meeting is to discuss items that are scheduled to be discussed or acted on at a very net another non virtual open meeting. So you can't make decisions as a library board in a virtual meeting. No action is to be taken. You still need to do the publicize notice, but that notice has include a link or dial a number to access for the meeting. But not least, there still has to be a physical location where the public can go for those who don't have internet access. That location is listed in the notice, and at least one member of the public body is in attendance at that location. So you could do virtual meetings, but someone still has to be there at a place. It's a purpose virtual meeting mostly, but I think it's a compromise to make sure. There is a virtual option have it. Yeah. And the full, I didn't put in here, but the full meeting has to be available through that webinar. You can't do like, okay, this group is going to break out do another sidebar or breakout room and some web meeting things call it. The nightcast to be live at the physical location location when public comment is happening. The people should be able to hear the full board, the full public body. So it's doable but there are some caveats. And can you clarify someone's know what is meant by no action is taken. What is an action that they could not do. Yeah, they can't decide anything. They are purely only allowed for the library board class of things. And like I said, it's a very small group of people that can act over virtual meeting right now, like statewide, things that have reps and Chad read and, you know, alliance that there's some up in the South Sioux City are getting together is actually becoming a hardship. Those people could vote online. Local boards can't vote on anything in a virtual meeting. It's only discussion. Okay, so they could have a discussion about something and then at the next meeting they would have to all be physically together somewhere, and then do vote. They have to do full minutes of virtual meetings. So that way you have that information as well. We'll talk more about minutes later to so if the entire board, I'm trying to, you know, I've had people ask about this and I want to make sure we have a clear understanding if the entire board is in the same location, physically. But they are also broadcasting at virtual friend who wants to listen or participate. Can that board then take votes because they are all physically together. Even though the meeting is also being broadcast virtually. Yeah, yeah, if the whole board is together, they can vote because basically the transmission is allowing people to see what's going on, but people will still have the availability if they if they had to choose to to get there in front of the public body in full in and express opinions and hear the deliberations. Okay, so help. So yeah, if everyone is there. Basically, it's your transmitting the meeting. I do not think you even have to let public comment in from those seeing the broadcast. That's what you're doing is broadcasting. Right. That's what's kind of different concepts not holding the whole meeting virtually letting people participate is just we're broadcasting what we're doing. That's another good question. And I have a feeling again this is relatively new as well. I imagine we will see more tweets in this over the next few years. Yeah, I think some people have had a lot of questions lately because everyone knew. Yes, we can do everything virtually now because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but now that there's been changes to it. There's more confusion is kind of obvious everything wrote virtual fine go do it stay safe. But now that we're trying to make it more. It's more restrictive, but still available. People are not sure where the line is for things. Yeah. And again, the reason we were able to do it during pandemic was through executive order from the governor's office. And once the emergency kind of ended. Well, so did that. You know, that executive order so the camera came up with this, the executive order expired. So now they changed and put it some person as permanently in the actual open meetings act. Yeah. All right, cool. All right. All right, I will move on here. We talked about the public's rights. We're talking about broadcasting and all that. So here, the public has the right to attend record broadcast, make notes, make comments at a public meeting. Right. So, anyone in the community could come in and record the full meeting. And then set up a Facebook live or the local radio station or television station, instead of cameras there is a public meeting in all sense of the word for that. The public body can create rules regarding those rights to allow all attendees to participate. For example, this is the one of the big ones setting time limits on public comments so all who want to make comments have the ability to do so. The public meeting doesn't run for 24 hours. So, the public body can say, we're going to have public comment but you're only limited to three minutes, four minutes, five minutes. I've been at some hearings where they look at the size of the room say we have to cut public comment time down to like three minutes because there's so many people on the top. But that is in that public body's rights. The board can say, we've got so many people we have to limit the timeframe. And they can also restrict location of recording devices, so they don't impede with other attendees ability to see, listen or record themselves. My example is, you can't set up a big television camera like the one of the big ones, right in front of the chair person's face, because that would limit people in the front row who might need to be able to live read. Right. They need to be able to see the chair person's mouth so they can live read and see what's going on. And also things like papers get passed and stuff handouts for the explaining things so you can't set up blockades for that type of thing to. So they are allowed in the room, but they can restrict some of the locations. So that way it doesn't impede other people in that room, or stop business from actually happening because they're dodging microphones, things like that. Let's talk a little bit more about the cans and cannot the public body cannot. So, these are, these things are prohibited from the public body making rules on they cannot require the public to identify themselves to simply attend the meeting. Anyone can walk in that door to the meeting. They cannot require the individual to be on the agenda prior to the meeting to make comment on something on the agenda. So let's say there's something on the agenda. They cannot say all those who want to make a for or against comment have to go to city hall and sign a paper. They cannot require that people should be able to go into that meeting and make comments. Now the public body can say we are doing public comment all at once for all the things on the agenda or they can break it down per agenda item that is their right, but they cannot require pre registration to do so. Okay, what they can do. They can require someone making public comment to disclose name and address, unless there's something severe like a witness protection type of thing, right, to protect the commenter but they can say, if you're going to talk to us, we have to know who you are and what address you're at. So it's a public comment, not an anonymous comment. You do not have the right to be to give anonymous content feedback to your public body in these meetings. And they can have some meetings without time for public comment at all. No listen, it is some, not all some things that it's like we have a full agenda. None of this is being voted on today so we'll do public comment on these agenda items. We'll do it at our next meeting next time. Those type of things. If they do not allow public comment for long stretches of time that they could be fine, could be found in violation of this. This law, but you certainly could say this meeting we just, we're not actually voting on anything that we haven't already discussed, and we'll order the stuff we'll discuss our next meeting as well so we're going to withhold public comment time for this because we had at last meeting on these things and next meeting on these other things. Does that make sense to folks. Looks like nobody's got any questions about it. All right. So, continuing with the public's rights, a current copy of the open meeting act must be posted in the same room as a meeting being held that location is pointing out started the meeting. This is a fairly recent court case clarifying hosting a copy. It means attaching it to the Bolton board hanging it on a chain or fasting it to a wall somehow, a loose copy on the table in the room will not satisfy this loss requirement. Again, this is a fairly recent court case. I know back when I started that was actually still some advice like well you don't have to post it just put some copies that there on the, the table. The reason is that way people can review the public meeting law without getting in the way of business, and without creating a hardship for other folks in the room. So that's why it has to be kind of posted. And then. Krista do we know much about posters for this year or Um, but still be worked on question. Yes. Yeah, some people may have in your libraries in your meeting room somewhere posters, big, you know wall size posters not just little eight by 11 things that were provided by the League of League of Nebraska municipalities in the past. And I have reached out to them to get updated ones. Yes. We are waiting until after this we were waiting until after this legislation legislative legislative session ended which it just did. So I do have to get in touch with them to and they're going to produce new ones with all of this year's changes. I tried to get them last year and we kind of got lost on shuffle but then they made more changes so that was okay. We're going to be purchasing a new poster. And here at the library commission, we are going to be purchasing acquiring however it's going to go copies for every public library in the state. So we will get a poster for each one of you to have, and we will mail them out to you at some point. Don't know when yet I've got to reach out to find out how long it takes to print out new ones. I don't know where they are in that process. But as soon as we do we'll be ordering 300 some odd posters and sending them out to every library so everyone will have a new current version of the poster to post put up in whatever is your meeting room if it's a meeting room in the library sure if it's a meeting room that's at the city offices I mean you can put it wherever works best for you but we are sending it all the public libraries. As soon as soon as I find out where they are in the process, but I had to reach out some already saying can we do this and they said yep, no problem we'll do it after the sessions over, and when we print out new ones so. Excellent. In the meantime, I mean you could print out some copies and stick up to the wall scotch tape. Some of our walls don't react well the scotch tape but you could do something temporarily until those posters come in so. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and go into minutes if you have questions go ahead and start put them in the chat. So the minutes are important part of this because not only are the minute or the meetings transparent people have to be able to go in and see, you know how that record was discussed so minutes shall include the time and place of the meeting members president absent and substance of all matters discussed, right. What that means is, you have to have a good idea of the what the discussion entailed. What the discussion points were made up what discussion points were made up you can't just say, especially from things that the board folks on. Like, you can't just say the library talked about summer reading. And the board voted yes, can't do that need a little bit more meat on that little bit more information. Speaking of votes, any vote will be done by a roll call vote with each members vote recorded in the minutes. This can be waived when you're voting for officers for the group. But yeah, people need to know how the representatives voted. So that is something that a lot of our libraries don't do, but it is in state statute. All documentation received or disclosed will be available for public within 10 working days of the meeting communities under 5000 can get another 10 days if the person in charge of minutes falls ill. Because they realize sometimes that there's one person who is handling all this. But if you're over 5000 as a hard line, 10 days after the meeting. So I'm point out all documentation. What I'm seeing for most of the interpretation of this is if you're passing the board a handout with something copy of that handout also needs to be attached with the minutes. There are some city attorneys to say no, but I find in those cases the minutes are just basically pasting and copying that information into the minutes. So, all of that has to be available to someone researching what happened in that meeting. So, you make a flyer about something, catch it to the minutes in the file. Another new thing, cities of the first class and larger child place on their websites the minutes of the meeting, no later than 10 working days after the meeting, and those also have to remain on the website for at least six months. Okay, so if you're one of the larger communities only already putting your agenda on the website, you are now putting the minutes on the website per state law. So the guidelines that you're using for the agenda as far as which website put it on. Yeah, that one just kicked in. Was it just July last year to it. That was also very good. Yeah, that was the last year thing as well. Yeah. For you to close sessions where their questions about minutes coming in. Check my time while we're doing that. I'm going to take a few minutes questions. Type into the question section of your go to webinar in case I don't see anything right now but if you think of anything, go ahead and type. It's got plenty of time in the session today so we will we can jump back to anything if you think of it later, definitely. Absolutely. All right, so let's talk about closed sessions we touched on it earlier. I've seen some refer to them as executive sessions. I don't know what's executive about them, because it's still the same people. Stay lock also closed sessions. These. These are part of the open meeting. Right, they aren't as they can be special but there still has to be a public meeting surrounding it. These meetings can have these closed parts of a meeting when it's talking about things like strategy sessions with collective bargaining real estate purchases litigation, that's either pending or imminent. Right, because that type of stuff. If that is done in an open forum you're actually making it harder for the city to get things done as far as good prices on real estate. If it's collective bargaining that that could could hurt either side of the argument litigation you don't want to have a lot of those strategy sessions in public because then you might not be able to do use some of the information in the actual litigation itself. All those seem fairly, fairly reasonable discussion regarding deployment of certain security personnel or devices. If you're having security, you don't want full information out, because whatever you're trying to protect against will know where to avoid and find other routes into a building or, or what's not investigative proceedings regarding allegations of criminal misconduct. This is one of those where you are actually helping protect the individual who's being investigated, because if it's public meeting people will have these things away. And remember people are innocent until proven guilty. So, some of the investigative proceedings are best done behind closed doors until you have the facts known. And then evaluation of the job performance of a person when necessary to prevent needless injury to the reputation of that person, and if that person does not request a public meeting. Okay, talking about employee, it could be potentially embarrassing to them, depending on what the case is so those can be in closed session. The employee can also say I want this to be part of the open meeting. It's in there in state law. I've had someone tell me that they were told it's only for union employees or unionized employees and that's not the case is in state law that. Oh, wow. And get the 84 1410 so that's chapter 84 section 1410 if you want to look at for yourself. I'll take my word for this or any of it. You can look it up for yourself, but yes. So, sometimes it is in the employees best interest to make it a public meeting, especially if they feel like the people evaluating them in potential closed session will be biased. Right, so that employee can have that protection. It's not here but I will mention a closed session cannot be held to protect the reputation of the board members holding that meeting. Right. I've seen some boards want to do that, but that is prohibited. You can protect other people in the community, but the board itself, their reputation cannot be protected through a closed session. That's something to keep in mind. I've heard of things happening. I wasn't there so I can't report any violations because I wasn't there. But that's something good for you to know. It would not be surprised if there's possibly a library board member, someone eventually who wants to have a close mission close I should protect their reputation. That cannot happen. So the board people do not get that protection of reputation protection by closed session. So that kind of the concept of they're a public figure or in public office sort of body. Right, all of their decisions should be able to be scrutinized eventually. And I have a little bit more about some types of public bodies have other eligible reasons but those don't apply to, to library boards or city councils and stuff like that. So, a little bit more a closed session. The process goes, you are in an open meeting. Right. The board states the reason for a closed session, and then there is a public vote to go into that closed session, while in that public part of the meeting. They cannot start a meeting and have it be completely closed at all. That's so that's one thing. There is a public meeting. They give the reason why they want to go to closed session and then there is a public vote to go into that. It is possible that the board members decide to vote against going into closed session. It's completely possible. They go into that closed session either they excuse all the people in the meeting to say please go out the hall, or the board members themselves go to an isolated room. They have their discussion, they come back, start the open meeting up again, and then they can vote. They cannot vote in that closed session. The vote has to be public. That roll call vote that we talked about has to happen in public. Right. So, that there is some process here so they cannot hold a completely secret meeting at all. Doesn't allow anyone in. There has to be a time where people are notified. If they're not in the room, they'd say what are going in closed session they vote to go into that closed session. And then when they come out they vote on whatever it is they need to vote on. This is open meeting act even those private discussions if there is a vote to be taken it has to happen in public questions on that. I think I scared everyone away. Good question to come up. Oh, okay. Good question. Do all board members have to vote to approve a closed session. The vote for closed session follows the core rules for that that board. It does not have to be unanimous. So, if a quorum says we're going into closed session. It's going to close session. Okay. We'll move on, but please feel free to throw questions in and we can always come back. I do want to touch on something social events. I know in many of our small communities, you can't help but run into other board members at things. Right. School activities, church activities, social groups like lions rotary. All of those. There is a statement in open meeting act that allows more than a quorum of members to get together at functions. I'm going to quote it here. The citation is at the end the act does not apply to chance meetings or to attendance at or travel to conventions or workshops of members of a public body, which there is no meaning of the body, then intentionally convene. If there is no votes or other action taken regarding any matter over which the public body has supervision control jurisdiction or advisory power. Okay. So, all the board members go to a training meeting. No problem. That doesn't have to be open meeting act as long as they're not voting on anything that that board has control over. Another example, let's say the library is having a fundraiser or book sale, all the members of the board can be there they just have to be really careful not to talk about business or vote trying to decide stuff at that session. You've got people who can't help but talk about that while they're around. You may want to suggest okay you two are over that quarter you two are over that part of the room. And that's kind of an extreme thing but as long as it's, it's not a meeting they're not doing meeting type things. It's okay. They're at the same bleacher at the, you know, at the school graduation, if they wanted to. So right. But yeah, that was another concern because I know it's like, there are sometimes where it's like the extended family gets together and you've got a quorum of board members. It's okay, as long as you're not talking to our voting on or deciding things that you understand that these social things happen that's not preventing you from being social. So just pay attention to what you discuss when you are. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about consequences for violating this act. Okay. First of all, if you think there's a violation who do you contact the county attorney and the state attorney general are the people who enforce this. If you think something happened, you go to the county attorney first and then the attorney general. Any meaning has held to have been found to a violated this act could see any adult decisions made in that meeting void it. So that means if there was a decision in a meeting that violated this act. You could do another lawsuit to void those specific things. It makes it vulnerable to change. Also for the individuals involved. There's a quote here I won't read it out loud but to be guilty of a class four misdemeanor which is a $500 fine. For multiple offenses there's a class three misdemeanor for a second, which is a $500 fine or three months in jail. And then severe violations of open meeting act like repetitively violating acts over and over with no do with no regard to how it's supposed to be done. There could be more severe penalties. Then we're going into like fraud level of discussions. If it's continuously a repetitive violations of acts. So, so yeah, there is an individual penalty for violating these laws. I also want to mention that anyone who was at that meeting can report these it doesn't have to be somewhat of similar stature as the board members so any attendee of a board that board meeting or a public body being that violates these could report it to the county attorney. In fact, there are sections where if you don't then you might be held liable as well, especially board members. There is a statute of limitations on reporting it like a year. If you wait a year that means nothing will probably happen. So, things to keep in mind. So that's this is not a toothless piece of legislation, there could be harm to the community and to the individuals if you violate this. So in order to bring this to the attorney general or the county attorney, someone would have to. It's a lawsuit that would have to happen. Or can you just call them and say hey I think something they did something wrong. Can someone check on it. I mean, how do they actually It depends if you're looking for If you yourself was harmed because of that, then there might be a lawsuit involved, but you could just report it to county attorney. If you think you witnessed that they were doing something that it was against the Open Meetings Act. Right. But if you yourself are looking to get some sort of, you know, the word escapes me even though I was looking at earlier. And because of a decision held in a meeting that was not held under Open Meeting Act, you could file your own lawsuit and your attorney fees could also be returned back to you if found that yeah you were harmed and they have to pay up. They have to change their decision or whatnot. But yeah, if it was just like, they're not doing the right thing. I wasn't personally harmed but they need to follow the law that I know that this is what the Open Meetings Act says and they're not doing it. Yeah. They may have other library laws is that the same situation for I know we did a separate section and I should have mentioned that too. We have kind of a two sessions we've done here and have a slide that kind of go together. So last month on June 21 we did a session on Nebraska library laws. And we mentioned briefly open meetings that act during that session but then we needed really full meeting just on that. So would that be the same situation if we you think that any library is breaking library or city is not following library laws. That part of state statute is unclear about the path that could be taken. I would probably start with county attorney. We can't do anything unless there is an actual lawsuit of some form. But yeah, like Open Meeting Act, it's pretty clear what the pathways are. If something happens. Chapter 51. It's not really spelled out there. So that would it's a little bit more of a gray area who you would start with. I might start with the county attorney. I know in some communities the county attorney is the same as the city attorney. So then you would probably have to go up to state level. Because if the county attorney is also the city attorney, they will be defending the city attorney, it's part of their job. So you can't have them pursue something that way. And for chapter 51. So, yeah, that one's a little less clear for that. Open Meeting Act, it's fairly clear your pathways to report it. Okay, thank you. So, I'm going to have this slide links for reference. So, text of Open Meeting Act. What that link goes, it goes to the website with the first part of it. If you want the full text that secondly, like gives you all of it in one big go so you can copy paste print out what have you. The attorney general's notes on Open Meeting Act is also very useful to find information on how things would be interpreted by, by his office. I do also want to mention, there were four bills in this last unit camera on Open Meeting Act, none of them passed, but Open Meeting Act does change we went at least three straight years with some tweak that would affect library boards. Advertising, where you hold that meeting. Involved with the newspapers, one year saw something that was passed the previous year got tweaked. So, it is good to kind of keep track of this and that's kind of what Chris and I are doing this review this year, we might have something year after year. And one of those bills that was introduced it did not pass would have changed meetings because then you had to allow public comment at every meeting and it may not have been as restricted time restricted as before. That's something that we have to keep in mind is we're holding a board meeting we could be here for three hours. Hopefully it never happens but there were some other smaller things that would affect library boards but so that's, it would be good to after the session ends maybe do a little bit of saying what passed what does it when does it take effect. I type of thing. Any other questions. Yeah, and those links, as I said they're in the slides that you're going to receive you'll you'll have access to after the session, and I've also linked them from the event page for this show to so you have quick access there as well. But you can keep your slide up there for now Scott, they may have any we have a few minutes left that we can answer any questions you have. So please do type your questions in if you have anything you want to ask about now that you thought of if you think it's something later go ahead and reach out to Scott at the Southeast Library Commission system, Southeast Library system, and, or myself and we can answer your questions. So, I think we answer the question about the emergency executive session and what it's what they are for and not for. We have a new question here. Okay, so kind of a mixture of things they want to know if these particular things are, they want to be confirmed with these particular things are a violation violation of the Open Meetings Act proxy votes, voting without a quorum, and votes during a closed meeting are all three of those in violation of the Open Meetings Act. Proxy votes aren't addressed at all in the Open Meeting Act so I would assume that those are not allowed. There's no provision for that happening. The last two definitely are you need the quorum to be able to conduct business so if you have a five person board you need at least three. You cannot conduct business with just two. And then the votes in closed session again that is in violation. You cannot do that. You can have your discussion in closed meeting but then you come out and just do the vote. Right. So both of those would be in violation. I also want to mention here. I don't think we got into quorum. There are some times where there needs to be some board interaction but not a full meeting. You could do that you could have two members of your library board as kind of a committee. They can't assign anything, but they can do research they could talk with an architect they could talk with the librarian. That is fine because you can't with two people out of a five person board right that's not quorum. They can take that information and bring it to the full board later. Right. So that is okay. There's some libraries where if they're hiring someone they have two members of library board as well as the librarian kind of doing all of the interviews and such, and then just how we there's multiple people there, they get multiple points of view on a candidate, but they don't have a full meeting right then and there there's whatever process they're doing later. So that is also something useful for you. You can have board reputation on things without meeting the full board, as long as you're not deciding anything right there and then vote goes in front of the full board. So. Right. All right. Any other see anything else come in more answering that question any other last minute desperate questions you want to ask about Open Minis Act. Go ahead and get it typed into your question section. I'll keep an eye on that, but I'm going to pull presenter control back to my screen just to do work on a little wrap up here. While we're waiting to see if there are any other questions. All right, there we go. We just got some thank yous thank you Scott for all this info. Good resources. We hope so. As I said this is a question we get asked a lot about open meetings and the library laws the previous session that we did. And that's why we did these these sessions and we have a legislature do things every year. And this may become a regular thing if something changes and either open meetings act or in state library laws or the effects libraries we will do updates on after each session is ended so we'll see if we'll do another one next year and then how it goes. And some of these changes are good and we like them and some of them are like, All right. Like the, I'm glad the one you mentioned about every meeting you have to allow public comment that's just not feasible. Yeah, and I'm glad just the logic isn't there. So. All right, so for today's show. As I said this is the event page for today show, and you might have seen it wasn't there before but I added it while we were talking a link to the text of the Open Meetings Act, and to the attorney general's notes. So I had these two here so this is the the actual from the state legislature website. And then from the attorney general's page I use this myself a lot to just confirm what, because there's more in here not just the law which sometimes read the law is very dry and like well what does that mean. He talks about well this is how it works in practice and this is what I would say if someone came to me about this issue. Oh, another question just popped up. I'll grab that while I'm seeing it here. Oh, another question. How long do we have to retain audio recordings of the public meeting. So you mean when we do a virtual session if there was a meeting is there how what are the rules, if any on retaining the audio recording or the virtual recording like this. There is nothing in state statute regarding audio recordings or video recordings of meetings retention wise. So that is up to how you want to archive it and research it. The only requirements would be for the written material and that type of thing so. Minutes are the official record of what happened at the meeting. Yeah, yeah so whatever recordings that will be basically up to you and your city or township or county or whatever level. The meeting is held at, as far as how you retain it and that type of thing. I could imagine that might be something in a few years we'll see them look at address that. Yeah, also doesn't. Individuals records. That is also not part of state statute so people in the room. They do not have to give up their recording they do not have to hand in their notes. That brought up another question I heard from another group is like, could they make me hand in my notes is like no this isn't school. Unless you are the secretary that you have a whole other duty. But yeah, individual broadcasts or recordings are not property of the city their property of the person who took those recordings or notes or whatever. So notes. So then here it notes though of people who attended the meeting. What about the notes of the actual board members if they take their own notes. Those are not covered with this it is assumed that the minutes would be the official record. And yet there was a group that the people taking the board members had to hand in their notes for some reason I think that's kind of odd. But yeah, there's nothing in state law about keeping it an individual person's doubts is the minutes. So that document that's created that is the thing that record what happened. Yeah. The only time those notes might get called into is if there is some lawsuit or something. But that is that individual would get some peanut not the city in my right. What I've understood I could be wrong that's one of those. I'm not the lawyer. Talk to an actual lawyer. If that's those things start happening that's when you call a lawyer not me or Scott. Yeah, yeah if it's gone that far. Absolutely. All right, thank you. Okay, so, as I said this is the session page for the show, it's going to be on our archive page so I'm going to pop back to the income is life main page. If you use your search engine of choice and type in and compass live the name of our show, you will come up with our main page and our archive page in your search results. There are upcoming shows, but our archive shows are right here afterwards, most recent ones at the top of the page. Today's will be posted here by the end of the day tomorrow. I will have a link to the recording on our YouTube channel and a link to Scott slides. Everyone who attended today's show and registered for today show will get an email from me, letting you know when the recording is ready. We also post them to our social various social media we have a Facebook page. Oh, actually that's over here. Yeah, that we link to if you like to use Facebook give us a like over there we post about here's reminder to log in today's show. Meet our presenters, and then when recordings are available we post on here. We use the hashtag and come live as an abbreviated hashtag of our show name on here and on Twitter and on Instagram. We also post on our social media, so you can keep an eye on things we're doing over there as well. You can search these archives you want to on it for any topic you might want to see if we did on the show on a topic. As I mentioned we did open the exact last year, but I would watch this year show because it's updated. But this is our full show archives going back to when encompass live first premiered which was in January 2009. So we're going on 15 years of the show. But we do have them all here. And you know this is something that we will do where librarians would keep things for historical purposes and as long as we have someplace to host our videos are recordings which right now is our YouTube channel. We will have them up here. So just pay attention to the original broadcast date of anything they're all dated so you can find it when the show first happened and do be aware things will change some shows will stand the test of time still be great useful information but some things are still old outdated resources may have changed drastically or no longer exist anymore. links may be broken. People might not work at the same library they worked out when they brought they presented for us 10 years ago so just pay attention to that day. If you do watch any of our older shows. All right, I don't see any other questions coming in so I think we'll wrap this up. Thank you everybody for being here. Thank you so much Scott for doing this update again for us. Maybe we'll see you again next year. Why that. Yeah. So here's our upcoming shows I'm as you can see I'm getting August days filled in about next week it is the last Wednesday of the month so that means it is pretty sweet tech day. Last Wednesday month is always when Amanda sweet our technology innovation librarian comes on the show and does a show about something tech related. So what we're doing next week is we have a guest presenter, our newest staff member here at the commission, I think, Andrew Sherman is our new and our computer services team and he's going to talk about filtering for specific compliance and just security in general cybersecurity issues that you will want to be paying attention to for computers that you have in your library. So if you are have issues concerns about that or questions or wonder how do I filter what's it all about. Sure. We'll be talking to us about that next week. So please do sign up for that show and any of our other upcoming ones. Keep it on our schedule. I'm in conversations with people will get some more sessions added into there for August and September. Thank you everybody, and hopefully we'll see you all in a future episode of the time.