FAIRHOPE, Alabama—Six years after a major revision of the state Open Meetings Act, the city has begun only in recent months to comply with the law as it applies to appeals to the Fairhope Personnel Board by employees contesting their firings or suspensions without pay.

The first open meeting with advance public notice of a personnel board appeal hearing occurred in November, with the board ruling for the employee and overturning his suspension without pay.

The city’s long-standing noncompliance with the OMA came to light during a Fairhope Courier series the past six months, with articles focusing on a variety of city personnel policies, procedures and practices.

Known as Alabama’s “sunshine law,” the 2005 statute describes in detail the requirements for how government meetings are to be conducted in open meetings so that the public can attend and observe. It does so by requiring advance public notice of the time and place of meetings and restricts the situations when public bodies can meet in private sessions.

Although the statute clarified its requirements and limited when personnel cases can be heard behind closed doors, the city has never brought its own employee handbook into compliance with the law, nor ensured that its appointed personnel board complied with the provisions of public notice and procedures for conducting meetings, according to a review of city records and several people familiar with the history of the board.

For personnel board cases in Fairhope, then, despite that overhaul of the law, it was as though the 2005 statute never happened. And even recently, the city’s compliance with the law has come grudgingly, often after coverage of personnel issues by the newspaper and extensive correspondence by the Courier with the city citing the requirements of the OMA.

The most recent skirmish over compliance issues came during an exchange of emails between the Courier and the city that followed an email notice sent by the city on Dec. 5. That notice informed the public about a Dec. 7 hearing involving Ronald Avera, a corrections officer and police department employee, who is contesting his proposed termination.

“We have a disciplinary hearing scheduled this Wednesday, however the employee has requested a closed hearing,” Pandora Jorgensen-Heathcoe, the city’s human resources administrator, stated in that email to media, city officials and others. “I could not advise you either way until I heard back from the employee; which I just did.”

What’s missing from that “public notice” email is the time and place of the personnel board meeting. A written public notice was also not posted on the bulletin board in City Hall at that time, as required by the statute.

In addition, the city indicated that it was the employee’s decision—not one of the personnel board based on OMA provisions—whether the meeting should have been open or not. That’s a procedure the city has followed for years—allowing the employee to make that determination—with some support in the current edition of the personnel handbook.

But that’s not what the state’s sunshine law requires, according to the general counsel for the Alabama Press Association.

“If the hearing was closed only upon request of the employee, clearly the meeting was not properly closed,” Montgomery attorney Dennis Bailey said. “The city procedure cannot overrule the Alabama statute. To go into executive session, there must be a motion and vote in open designating the exception.”

In the Avera hearing, as in past personnel board cases in Fairhope (except for the one in November which changed the trend in OMA compliance by the city in such cases), public notice was not given of the time and place of the meeting, so that the public could attend.

Thus, throughout the morning and early afternoon of Dec. 6, the Courier sought the time and place of the meeting, with citations to the law and facts, receiving various replies from the HR administrator but never a response naming the place or time of the meeting.

At 1:53 p.m., the Courier sent an email to the HR staff person, following an interview with Mayor Tim Kant, who stated to the Courier that the meeting should be open, and that notice of its time and place should have been given.

“The meeting is here in the Council Chambers at 10 a.m.,” Jorgensen-Heathcoe then wrote at 2:06 p.m.

The city’s final email to the Courier came that day at 4:46 p.m., setting the issue of personnel board hearings in a historical context, as well as establishing a new procedure, apparently, for the future.

“All personnel board meetings in the past dealing with employee appeals have always been private,” Jorgensen-Heathcoe stated. “To comply with the new Open Meetings Act law, Mayor Kant has instructed me to notify everyone when the board will be in session.”

Still, the Dec. 7 meeting never took place.

The Courier showed up at 10 a.m. the next day, but no one was there.

The meeting had been rescheduled late the night before at the request of Avera’s attorney, but no notice had been provided to the public of the rescheduling the next morning.

Kant said his administration granted the employee attorney’s request for a continuance on advice of the city’s legal counsel.

“Why things have been like they have been and why they didn’t change (to comply with the OMA), that’s something you’d have to ask others who have been here longer than me,” City Administrator Gregg Mims said. “But my personal opinion about the whole situation is that it would be in the city’s best interests to have things as open as we can have them.”