Tapes tell of illegal session by Jordan

Audio tapes of a controversial closed-door meeting held by the Jordan School Board in November were released Friday, revealing several study sessions that led to the district's recently adopted budget policy on police officers in schools.

School district leaders released the tapes after the Utah attorney general ruled Thursday that the board had violated Utah's Open and Public Meetings Act by closing the meetings to the public.

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he is glad the Jordan School District finally released the recordings.

"They did violate the Open and Public Meetings Act, but we're delighted they've agreed to cooperate and release their records," he said.

The legal battle began with a complaint to the Utah Attorney General's Office by the Deseret Morning News after the Jordan School Board held a series of closed-door meetings in 2006. The district said it was merely discussing security, but the Deseret Morning News said the discussions went into policy and budget issues, items that by law must be open to the public.

The newspaper's complaint was a topic of discussion in the closed meeting as board members talked about a radio interview in which Shurtleff referred to the Jordan School Board as an example of how some school districts are unnecessarily closing meetings.

"Sounds like he's got a preconceived notion without even hearing the facts. Isn't that kind of scary for a legal person?" one unidentified board member said on the recording.

The attorney general threatened to sue the district after it twice rebuffed his investigators' efforts to obtain the tapes and minutes to determine if the law had been broken.

After the district finally handed over the evidence, the Utah Attorney General's Office concluded that the board had broken the law.

"I hope that this serves as an education to all people who serve in government, whether it's on a volunteer board or something else, that the rules are important," Shurtleff said.

While it is a criminal offense to violate the open meetings act, Shurtleff's office closed the case after the district agreed to release the recordings to the Deseret Morning News and other news media outlets.

The discussion in the recordings from the Nov. 7 and Nov. 21 meetings centered around how the district planned to pay for about 30 resource police officers in high schools and middle schools.

Originally, a federal grant helped foot that bill, but that money is gone, and district leaders had to decide whether to continue the district's contract with municipal police districts.