Perplexing protocol

It was 2:14 p.m. Sunday when Hayden city attorney Fonda Jovick sent a written recommendation to City Council to cancel a special meeting scheduled for 4 p.m. Monday and hold an emergency meeting, an executive session, in its place at 3 p.m.

The special meeting, which would have addressed the process for appointing an interim mayor, was canceled and the emergency meeting was updated on Hayden's website at 9 a.m. Monday.

Jovick wrote in an email sent Tuesday to The Press that she "received information directly and only to me on Sunday morning that indicated potential and significant harm to the City and/or Council that needed to be discussed previous to any further action on solidifying the process for appointing an Interim Mayor."

"Though I am unable to address the details of the Executive Session, I can assure the residents of Hayden that this meeting was not for the purpose of discussing the process for appointing an Interim Mayor," she wrote. "All discussion and any decisions related to that process will be conducted at the next regularly scheduled Council meeting."

Idaho's open meeting law allows government agencies to schedule emergency meetings with less than 24-hour notice. According to the law, an emergency is "a situation involving injury or damage to persons or property, or immediate financial loss, or the likelihood of such injury, damage or loss, when the notice requirements of this section would make such notice impracticable or increase the likelihood or severity of such injury, damage or loss, and the reason for the emergency is stated at the outset of the meeting."

"Having received no written objection from any Council member to my recommendation, as soon as City staff was available on Monday morning, the meeting changes were posted," Jovick told The Press via email Tuesday afternoon.

Two items were listed on the agenda for the April 4 emergency meeting/executive notice which was posted on a City Hall bulletin board and published on the city of Hayden's website:

• To consider the evaluation, dismissal or disciplining of, or to hear complaints or charges brought against, a public officer, employee, staff member or individual agent

• To communicate with legal counsel for the public agency to discuss the legal ramifications of and legal options for pending litigation, or controversies not yet being litigated but imminently likely to be litigated.

These are two topics government agencies are allowed by law to discuss behind closed doors in executive session.

Idaho Chief Deputy Attorney General Brian Kane, chief legal counsel for the Idaho Legislature and secretary of state, told The Press via email that since the meeting was an emergency executive-session-only meeting, the procedural requirements for an executive session should have also been met.

"If all of the above procedural requirements were met, then the meeting likely met the requirements," he said.