From the Hotline

By Teri Henning
Pennsylvania Newspaper Association

Q: Are an agency’s “agenda-setting” meetings required to be public? What if the agency advertises the meetings as public, but holds them in a small “back room” that the public cannot access without permission?

A: If a quorum of an agency attends these meetings, they should be open to the public.

The general rule of the Sunshine Act is that any time a quorum of an agency meets to deliberate agency business or take official action, the meeting must be open to the public unless an exception applies.

In discussing what issues to put on the agenda for a particular public meeting, it seems clear that the members will necessarily be discussing agency business. Discussions about whether and how to address specific issues that are before an agency involve the “framing” or “preparation” of agency policy. In setting the agenda for an upcoming meeting, agency members are making decisions about what issues will be discussed and decided at the next meeting, as well as the order in which the issues will be addressed. For these reasons, to the extent that the agenda-setting meetings are attended by a quorum of an agency, they should be open to the public.

If an agency holds these meetings in a tiny “back room” that the public cannot easily access, the agency is not opening the meetings to the public in the manner required by the Sunshine Act. An "open" meeting must be easily accessible to the public. A meeting is not open if a member of the public has to wait to be "admitted" to that meeting or if the meeting is held in a space that can only accommodate the agency members themselves.

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