AG office dismisses complaint filed by R-J

CARSON CITY -- The attorney general's office has dismissed a complaint filed by the Review-Journal that asserted a state agency broke the open meeting law by placing the wrong address on notices for a meeting.

Deputy Attorney General George Taylor said in a decision last Thursday that the state Legislature did not intend for the open meeting law to apply to workshop meetings conducted by staffs of state agencies.

During the Oct. 16 meeting, members of the Division of Environmental Protection's Bureau of Air Quality Planning solicited public comments on proposed regulations for greenhouse gas emissions.

Taylor said the staff of the agency did not have power to implement any regulations. Consequently, he said they could not be considered a "public body" under the open meeting law when conducting a workshop meeting.

"If it is not a public body, the OML is not applicable and the error on the workshop notice is not remediable under the OML," Taylor wrote.

Because the wrong address for the meeting was listed on the workshop agenda, a Review-Journal reporter could not initially find the meeting location and arrived late. A staff member refused his request to restart the meeting but later agreed to hold another workshop. Only three members of the public attended the subsequent meeting.