Open to public?

Members of the New Iberia City Council have multiple private meetings with less than a quorum to receive information, Mayor Hilda Curry said.

Attorney opinions differ as to whether or not this is a violation of the state’s open meeting law.

A quorum is a simple majority of a public body’s members present. That would require a meeting to be held publicly rather than privately.

Curry suggested the above course of action following Councilman Dan Doerle’s request to meet with Iberia Parish Sheriff-elect Louis Ackal regarding concerns about the city’s contract with the sheriff’s office at last week’s meeting.

“We’ll do three sessions like we normally do so we don’t have a quorum and you’ll each have the opportunity to have face-to-face discussion with him (Ackal),” Curry said at the City Council meeting.

According to opinion number 90-349 of the Louisiana Attorney General, public meeting law is triggered when:

• There is a quorum present.

• The meeting is to deliberate, act, or receive information on a matter over which the public body has supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power.

Then-Attorney General William J. Guste Jr. ruled a council could meet with less than a quorum, but said they “should be cautioned to avoid the use of the sanction of this opinion to engage in the so-called ‘walking quorum.’

“In this artifice, different committee members leave the meeting and different committee members enter the meeting so that while an actual quorum is never physically present, an actual quorum during the course of the meeting participates in the discussion.”

Louisiana Press Associa-tion Attorney Ryan R. Brown said “it appears what the mayor is doing constitutes a walking quorum, an attempt to evade and circumvent the Open Meetings Law.”

On Wednesday New Iberia lawyer Leon Minvielle, a partner in City Attorney Ted Haik’s law firm, said New Iberia’s situation is “totally different.”

Minvielle attended last week’s meeting in place of Haik, who is out of the country.

“I don’t think there’s a walking quorum,” Minvielle said. “Every public body does that.”

Minvielle said he would interpret the attorney general’s opinion as council members leaving and entering the same physical meeting. He also noted that different attorneys general, as different lawyers, might have different opinions.

“This opinion is written by the same guy who said a fowl is not an animal, so you could have chicken fights,” he said.

Minvielle said the most important thing is that an attorney general’s opinion is “an interpretation of the statute by them. It’s not binding as law. This is only an opinion.”

Doerle said some of the instances in which council members have received information in groups of three were for the city charter, the Gordon and Allied Waste garbage pickup contract and salaries for city employees.

“I’m not a legal advisor,” Doerle said. “If she (Curry) calls the meeting, if I’m available, I’m there.”

Councilman Rocky Romero said the meetings were a common practice in the current and former administrations and that they are held to get “enough information to make a rational decision.”

“Usually at the (council) meeting we pretty much come out with the information we’ve gathered,” he said.

Asked why the meetings would not be held publicly, Romero said “that’s a good question.”

Curry said Wednesday that Ackal has not yet met with City Council members. She said she had spoken to him and he had agreed to meet with them one on one, but would not make changes until after he has had time in office.

In general “anytime we need to discuss anything in private we can’t have a quorum,” Curry said, adding three sessions are usually used to give council members information or explain something to them.

Curry said it was a common practice when she was a councilwoman and she did not believe there was anything wrong with it.