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Mr. Chris Miller Ms. Dona Bacon October 26,2006 Page 2 Let me put this in the context of the legal framework. The question becomes what is a meeting to which the Open Meeting Law applies? One can say in general the law applies to all meetings of a city council, and in general, meetings of its committees and subcommittees. However, the definition of a meeting for purposes of the Open Meeting Law has been declared to be a"gathering of a quorum or more 1r�e��hers of the governing body at which members discuss, decide or receive information as a group on issues relating to the official business of that governing body." Mober� v. Indeoendent School District No. 281, 336 N.W.2d 510 (Minn. 1983). Chance social gatherings, even though a quorum may be present, are not covered by the law. But the social gatherings cannot be used for purposes of conducting official business unless the notice requirements of the law are satisfied. The Mober� court case is generally referred to as the "Bible" in this area of the law. �'�� dealt with the definition of what is a meeting. However it also dealt with other concerns. It noted that the rule that it was fashioning could be circumvented by serial face-to- face meetings or telephone conversations between governing body members to marshal their votes on an issue before it is initially raised at a public hearing. The Court did not prohibit k such conversations, noting that anyone who wished to circumvent a rule would find a way to do it. This is because the Mober� court quite candidly acknowledged that there is a�,�� f, I f� benefit to private personal discussions between public officials in an attempt to persuade each other to resolve issues as long as that discussion is not designed to "avoid public discussion altogether, forge a majority in advance of public hearings on an issue, or to hide improper influences." This puts us into the Mankato Free Press v. Citv of North Mankato cases. The City of North Mankato was seeking to hire a new City Administrator. There were five finalists. The City Council members conducted simultaneous serial one-on-one interviews of each of the five finalists, so that each candidate was interviewed separately by each Council member. These interviews were not open to the public or the media. While there were other issues in the case, one was whether the City violated the Open Meeting Law by conducting the serial interviews with job finalists. The district court, relying on Moberg, reasoned that when the City Council conducted the one-on-one interviews there was never a meeting of a quorum of the Council. The court noted that while this may have violated the spirit of the Open Meeting Law, it did not violate the written statute. Also the district court noted that while Mober� had indicated that serial meetings could violate the Open Meeting Law, the City procedure was not used "to avoid a public hearing or to fashion agreement on an issue." Because the case came to the Court of Appeals on appeal of a summary judgment, and not a trial, the Court of Appeals ruled that the