A state official says Woodbury City Council violated Minnesota’s open meeting law in September when members called a closed session and temporarily suspended a school resource officer contract.

In a non-binding opinion issued this week, Minnesota Department of Administration Commissioner Tamar Gronvall said members of the council improperly used attorney-client privilege exemptions to hold a closed session on Sept. 6, where they moved to end the officers contract.

Woodbury City Administrator Clint Gridkey on Thursday defended the council’s use of a closed session and said they are working with city legal counsel to review the opinion.

“The Woodbury City Council fully believed it had a good-faith legal basis to go into closed session on September 6 to address the potential for litigation regarding prematurely breaching the school resource officer contract,” he said in a statement. “This was a complex legal situation that needed to be addressed expediently due to recent changes in state law.”

Contract with South Washington County Schools

At the September meeting, the council privately decided to break a contract with South Washington County Schools that placed Woodbury police officers in East Ridge High School and Woodbury High School. The move came as a new state law governing police use of force in schools led to concerns among Minnesota law enforcement groups about liability for officers working within public schools.

The council said the closed session was necessary because they were concerned about a potential lawsuit resulting from breaching the school officers contract with the school district. Woodbury’s school resource offer contract with South Washington County Schools was not set to expire until the end of 2024.

State open meeting law allows government officials to conduct business privately if it involves discussing a threatened or ongoing lawsuit. But according to a complaint filed with the state by Woodbury resident William Brown, there was no indication the district or anyone else would sue the city.

Before the Sept. 6 meeting, city attorney Kevin Sandstrom reached out to school district attorney Mick Waldspurger asking to discuss a potential breach of the school officers contract, according to the complaint. He also informed him of the city council’s intent to hold a closed session on the matter.

Waldspurger said he told Sandstrom “that this is precisely the type of discussion that must occur in open session so the public can have a full understanding of the relevant factors considered by the Council,” the complaint stated.

Officers pulled from high schools

Two days after the meeting, the city of Woodbury told South Washington County Schools it was suspending its contract with the district, according to the complaint. Officers pulled out of two high schools on Sept. 11, though they returned just a few weeks later after Attorney General Keith Ellison issued an advisory that assuaged law enforcement concerns.

Brown argued that since the district did not threaten a lawsuit against the city over the school resource officers contract, the city council improperly used attorney-client privilege exemption from open meeting law when they deliberated their decision behind closed doors.

“Many people in our City believe this is because City leadership did not want the public to hear their real opinions on the issue,” he wrote in his complaint.

Since the meeting was closed under the attorney-client privilege exemption, there’s no recording of what members discussed, according to city officials.

In her opinion dated Nov. 14, Commissioner Gronvall sided with Brown’s argument that the closed session broke open meeting law.

“When public bodies rely on the narrow attorney-client privilege exception to go into closed session, it should return to open session to engage in votes or discussion that fall outside this authority,” she wrote in the opinion.

Opinion non-binding

While the Department of Administration found Woodbury city leaders violated state open meeting law, the opinion is nonbinding and not enforceable. Independent parties have to bring alleged violations forward in district courts in order for any action to be taken.

Minnesota open meetings law prescribes penalties for intentional violations, including fines of up to $300 for members of a government body found to have violated the law. A person found to have violated the law in three or more legal actions involving the same governmental body “forfeits the right to serve on that body for a time equal to the term the person was serving.”

Woodbury was just one of dozens of cities across the state to suspend school resource officer programs in response to the force law, though many, including Woodbury have now restored their programs.

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