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Municipal Law Q&A
Can a governmental body hold a retreat?
All types of governmental bodies are permitted
to hold retreats. Most retreats involve a meeting, away from the governmental
body's regular meeting location, and often at a hotel or conference center
where the officials can more informally discuss the goals of their government
and ways to identify and correct problems. Most retreats involve meetings
at which at least a majority of a quorum of the governmental body is present.
For that reason, retreats are considered to be public meetings. Most retreats
take place in an open meeting session, with members of the public and the
press invited to attend. Often such meetings have a fixed agenda, and sometimes
they utilize a consultant as a facilitator. A number of members of this
law firm have assisted communities in this capacity.
Because these sessions are public meetings, they
must be held at a location and at a time when members of the public would
be able to attend. There does not appear to be any legal problem in holding
such meetings outside of the corporate boundaries of the governmental body
so long as the distance from its jurisdiction is not so far or the time
so late as to make it difficult for members of the public to attend. Meetings
may be held at times of the day or week different from the normal meeting
time of the governmental body. Some governments hold sessions on Friday
evening and all day Saturday. As long as a member of the public or the press
are allowed to attend such meetings, these times should not present a legal
problem.
Sometimes a governmental body may wish to discuss
certain matters which are controversial, involve inter-personal relationships,
and would have political overtones if discussed at a public session. One
provision of the Open Meetings Act allows for an interesting exception,
which permits all or portions of such meetings to be held in closed sessions.
The 16th exception to the Open Meetings Act allows meetings to be closed
for "self-evaluation, practices and procedures or professional ethics,
when meeting with a representative of a Statewide association of which the
public body is a member." School Boards have held such sessions to
discuss Board policies for many years when joined by a representative of
the Illinois Association of School Boards. Other Statewide organizations
have, upon request, provided representatives to assist in such sessions.
Some governments have reacted to a breakdown in
civility by scheduling a closed session for "self-evaluation purposes."
Often, such retreats held in closed sessions have helped the governmental
body to get back into a mode where officials have increased trust and confidence
in each other. Even more effective is a session where the elected or appointed
individuals on a governmental body use the freedoms of a closed retreat
to discuss ways in which the government can work better even though they
are not in a crisis situation.
Please contact this law firm if you would like
more information on how to hold retreats. Please call Stewart Diamond.
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