The Indiana Law Blog raises an interesting point that I’ve found mildly irritating for years. The underlying post is about Speaker Bosma’s request for an opinion about whether Rep. Turner violated ethics laws or other authorities by lobbying for a family member’s nursing home business. But that led Ethics Committee chairperson Rep. Steuerwald to voice concerns about the investigation potentially running up against confidentiality concerns with legislative caucuses.
Legislative caucuses are, generally speaking, where members of the same political party in a chamber (e.g. House Republicans, Senate Democrats) meet behind closed doors to discuss strategy.
Generally speaking, I think private discussions have some utility. For example, members can speak their mind without fearing that some poorly articulated nuance is going to be thrown in their face at the next political campaign. So, I’m not entirely against these private discussions. My gripe is that the General Assembly does not extend the same privilege to other public bodies. Under the Open Door Law, other boards, commissions, departments and offices exercising administrative, judicial or legislative power aren’t entitled to meet in private to hash out a decision in advance.
Whatever standard the General Assembly applies to itself should also be applied to other state and local boards and commissions. It’s a goose and gander thing.
Actually the exception for caucuses doesn’t just apply to the General Assembly. The key though is the definition of what a “caucus” is under the statute.
(h) “Caucus” means a gathering of members of a political party or coalition which is held for purposes of planning political strategy and holding discussions designed to prepare the members for taking official action.
For example, the Democrats and Republicans on the Indianapolis City-County Council can each meet before action in committee or on the floor. I know there has been some confusion on this but their caucus meetings are excepted from the open records law. As far as a non-partisan example, if there was for example an “education reform” caucus of the IPS board, they could meet in private and discuss strategy before the regular meetings, even if they constituted a majority of the board.
There is also the executive meeting ability of other elected boards that can meet for specific reasons (employee evaluation, compensation, discipline discussions, pending negotiations and pending litigation). Now they aren’t supposed to deliberate items that should be handled in a public meeting or discuss/determine an outcome, but…