This story was originally published by the Louisiana Illuminator and is reprinted below with permission. 

All government bodies — from the local library board discussing book bans to the state board of education debating social studies standards — must send email notices of their meetings to anybody who requests them under a new law that went into effect Thursday, Aug. 1. 

House Bill 446 by Rep. Stephanie Hilferty, R-New Orleans, now Act 617, expands an existing provision of the state’s open meetings law. Previously, public bodies were only required to send notices to members of the news media who requested them, but Hilferty’s law now requires they be sent to anyone who asks. 

Open meetings laws ensure the public’s right to know what governments do. They’re part of “sunshine laws” that every state and the federal government have put in place to ensure transparency. 

Sunshine laws apply to all public bodies in Louisiana, though broad exceptions are granted to the Legislature and now the governor’s office. The Legislature already allows members of the public to sign up for email notices for committee hearings.

Other examples of public bodies are school boards, city councils, higher education boards of supervisors and even state university student governments. In New Orleans, the list of public bodies also includes charter schools run by nonprofit organizations – although that wasn’t always clear after Hurricane Katrina, when the city began to move toward a system composed almost entirely of charter schools.

Over the last 20 years, New Orleans charter-school boards have gradually come into compliance with the original law, which required the media to be notified of board meetings in the same manner as board members. Even today, some still fail to notify reporters of meetings or continue to purge reporters from their lists – one did so annually. During the early days of The Lens, when a team of young reporters tried to cover every single charter-board meeting every month, they found that many schools came into compliance with the state’s budgeting act after reporters began covering the meetings. Similarly, board members grew not to question reporters’ presence at meetings, though some initially bristled at the idea, contrary to open meeting law.

The new 2024 law came as welcome news to some parents at Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans, who have struggled with the charter school’s officials in the past, when they failed to notify the public of meetings and circumvented state sunshine laws, sometimes willfully – they once strategically dropped below a quorum and kicked out reporters, because Louisiana law specifies that gatherings at which a quorum is not present is not considered a meeting under the state’s open meeting law. 

“It’s about time,” said Lycée parent Paula Griffin, who has witnessed these irregularities since 2012, when her children started attending the school and she began regularly attending board meetings.

One of the main issues, Griffin said, is that the Lycée board relies on a high-turnover staff to post agendas and meeting notices. When that doesn’t happen, there’s seemingly no oversight or penalty, she said. “Open meetings laws are supposed to favor the public but little or no accountability allows them to fall to the wayside,” she said. 

At Lycée, parents have sometimes been the lone voice of accountability for the board.

As soon as the new law went into effect Thursday, Griffin filed a request to be added to the meeting notifications list. 

Public bodies

Any body that derives its power from another is also a public body. For example, the LSU Board of Supervisors delegates authority to the LSU Faculty Council, making it a public body. The council then delegates authority to the Faculty Senate, which delegates authority to committees and subcommittees, making those organizations public bodies as well. 

“All of these bodies make decisions that are important to someone,” said Steven Procopio, president of the good government group Public Affairs Research Council. “The smaller the board, the harder it is going to be to get information, which makes it even more important that people can get that information easily.” 

The law specifically requires these notices be sent out to people “in the same manner as is given to members of the public body,” which is usually by email. It must include the agenda, date, time, and place of the meeting, which cannot be changed within 24 hours of the meeting. 

Bodies are also required to physically put up notices at the site of the meeting and to place them on their website, if they have one. 

Members of the news media typically sign up for these emails with the communications director for the government agency, as these officials are usually in charge of sending the notices. Some agencies might set up new protocols now that the noticing requirements are expanded. 

These policies are likely to be different for each organization. 

For example, the Southern University Board of Supervisors will soon set up an email sign-up form on its website for the public, but the Louisiana Community and Technical College Board of Supervisors will send notices to anybody who emails boardmeetings@lctcs.edu to request them. 

The LSU System and the University of Louisiana System boards have not yet decided how to handle these requests, but email addresses for their media relations officials are on each of their websites. 

If an organization does not have any media relations staff, the public can also email the head of the organization, who usually has a title such as chair, director or president. 

Violations of the open meetings law can be reported to the Louisiana attorney general or a district attorney. Members of the public can also sue public bodies and officials who violate the law. 

If a violation of an open meetings law occurs, a judge can void the actions a public body took during the meeting when the law was violated. Members of the body who know about a violation but still participate in the meeting can be personally liable for a penalty of up to $100, according to the new statute 

Hilferty’s law also requires the governor’s Division of Administration to set up a one-stop website for all public meeting notices. The new website will have a capability for members of the public to request electronic notices. A timeline for the creation of the new website has not yet been announced.

Piper Hutchinson wrote this story for the Louisiana Illuminator. The Lens’ version of the story includes reporting from Marta Jewson about New Orleans charter schools and records laws.