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Alabama's Supreme Court just put a big black spot on our sunshine law
https://www.al.com/news/2020/09/alabamas-supreme-court-just-put-a-big-black-spot-on-our-sunshine-law.htmlUpdated Sep 06, 2020; Posted Sep 06, 2020
The Alabama Supreme Court didn't rule a spectator has no right to stream a Public Service Commission hearing. It ruled that meeting wasn't a public meeting, and it created a big loophole all other government bodies can use to skirt the Alabama Open Meetings Act
By Kyle Whitmire | kwhitmire@al.com
This is an opinion column.
If you’ve ever had to sit through many public meetings, you will have noticed there are open meetings. And then there’s the other meetings — the meetings that weren’t advertised, that the public wasn’t invited to — that happened sometime before the public ones.
Like dark energy or dark matter in physics, you don’t have to see the other meeting to know it’s there. You can tell by its pull on everything else.
Snip
A ruling this week gave Alabama’s Public Service Commission a free pass to hold hearings with public utilities behind closed doors, and it opened a whole new space for special interests to work their influence where we can’t see them.
More at link.
