Riley County counselor Clancy Holeman said the county has complied with a Kansas Open Meetings Act complaint from a Manhattan citizen.
The Riley County Board of County Commissioners and the Geary County Board of County Commissioners were recently found to be in violation of KOMA by the Kansas Attorney General.
Both commissions were found to be in violation of KOMA after a joint meeting held in executive session with notice in 2012.
The makeup of the Riley County commission then was current Manhattan Mayor Karen McCulloh, Dave Lewis and Alvan D. Johnson. Neither serve on the commission now.
The Geary County commission remains the same, however. R. Ben Bennett, Larry Hicks and Florence Whitebread still serve.
“We personally believe in our opinion — again, just our opinion — it was a hyper-technical reading of some provisions of the open meetings act, but again, that’s what the attorney general is there to do, is to resolve those type of issues,” Holeman told KMAN this week. “That is their job.”
Holeman said the county has answered the attorney general’s requests.
“Both boards approved release of the document as a response to the open records request that was made,” he said. “The attorney general did find there was a violation of the Kansas Open Meetings Act and said there was no penalty that was to be imposed on either county commission and that was the end of it.
“So we respected that and we’ve complied. There was a suggestion — not a requirement –that there be any kind of additional (KOMA) training made available to both county commissions, and we’d do that as a matter of course anyway.”
