Request By:
Mr. W. David Denton
City Attorney
City Hall
Paducah, Kentucky 42001
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
You have requested an opinion of the Attorney General as to whether the commissioners of the City of Paducah may meet in closed session for the purpose of hearing presentations by city and union negotiating teams regarding current bargaining negotiations. Our answer is affirmative.
Exceptions to the requirements for open meetings are set forth in KRS 61.810 and include, inter alia, the following:
"All meetings of a quorum of the members of any public agency at which any public business is discussed or at which any action is taken by such agency, are declared to be public meetings, open to the public at all times, except the following:
* * *
"(5) Collective bargaining negotiations between public employers and their employees or their representatives."
The foregoing statute makes it clear that actual face to face negotiations between a public agency and union representatives of public employees may be held in closed session.
The open meetings exception has been broadened by judicial interpretation in the case of Jefferson County Board of Education v. Courier Journal, Ky.App. 551 S.W.2d 25 (1955) to allow a public agency which is formulating its demands or position preparatory to collective bargaining negotiations either by way of deliberations or instructions to its advocate to be held in closed session. In that same case the court held that reports or status briefings concerning a proposed contract between a school board and two teachers' associations and which recommended to the board that negotiations should take place did not fall within the exception to the open meetings requirement.
Since the premises stated in your question are that actual bargaining negotiations are in progress, it is the opinion of this office that a closed session is permissible.