Educational Service Unit 6 board member Alan Jacobsen asked the question: Are the administrators of the 18 ESUs meeting in violation of the state’s open meetings law?

It took eight months to get the answer, but Jacobsen got the one he was looking for.

Yes, said an opinion issued Dec. 12 by Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning’s office: The Educational Service Unit Administrators Association violated the Nebraska Open Meetings Act, in certain circumstances.

In a complaint filed in April, Jacobsen said the administrators were aware of the open meetings law, but still took on the authority to vote on and decide public policy issues and how public money would be spent.

“The ESUAA conducts private cracker barrel sessions,” Jacobsen said, “attended by the ESUAA administrators before each … session.”

Jacobsen and other ESU 6 board members became curious about the group when their administrator left for another job and asked that the board transfer $32,069 to another ESU. The board didn’t understand where the money had come from and began asking questions.

But the answers didn’t come easily. And they wondered, Why was that “flow through” money not to be questioned or understood by board members?

Jacobsen eventually learned the money had been collected when the administrators decided to offer teacher training, authorized by the interlocal agreement for ESU members and Department of Education members. The group charged the school districts for expenses associated with that training, and the payment had built up over several years.

Jacobsen wanted to know what other business the group was conducting and who was holding them accountable. Why did they have a large cash reserve?

And why weren’t the group’s meetings open?

For the most part, the administrators meet as a nonprofit to share information about their respective ESUs, to coordinate and cooperate, and to support or propose legislation that allows ESUs to better serve their schools.

But sometimes they meet as a board under the ESU Core Services Consortium Agreement, an interlocal agreement formed in 2000. They talk about spending the 1 percent of core service dollars given by the ESUs for staff development. Then, the opinion said, the group becomes a public body.

And when it acts to advise the ESUs, that’s public business, too.

The meetings held pursuant to the consortium agreement should have been open, but they weren’t, said Leslie Donley, the assistant attorney general who wrote the opinion.

“We cannot tell when the administrators met as a private association and when they met as the board under the ESU Core Services Consortium Agreement,” Donley said.

The group made no attempt to keep their administrator activities separate from their duties specified by the interlocal agreement.

But, the opinion said, if the ESU board members are concerned about the workings of the administrators association, or the legality of the consortium agreement, it’s up to them to resolve the issues.

Jacobsen said the opinion was “worth waiting for.”

“This is a victory for the people,” he said. “It reaffirmed that the people’s business is supposed to be done in public.”

He said the administrators association has made numerous decisions that should be open to public scrutiny, including hiring a lobbyist, hiring an attorney, entering an interlocal agreement with ESUs and creating an informal partnership with the education commissioner to develop and market software to schools.

In his complaint, Jacobsen alleged that the administrators association included a voting member from the state Department of Education appointed by Commissioner Doug Christensen.

But the opinion found no merit in that allegation.

Still, Jacobsen wasn’t ready to let Christensen off the hook.

“The administrators have used an uncanny close association with … Christensen to gain a stronghold over the elected ESU boards,” he said in a prepared release.

While the opinion fell short of citing wrongdoing on the part of the commissioner, he said, it “cast a poor light on educational professionals who by virtue of their paid positions should know better than to attend meetings where decisions are being made in secret.”

Donley said the Attorney General’s Office believes the administrators were acting on the advice of their attorney when they failed to open their meetings.

A lawsuit has been filed against the administrators association in Keith County to stop it from violating the open meetings law.

Until a decision is made on that suit, Donley said, the state Department of Justice will not take further action against the association.

However, she said, Bruning’s office will admonish the members of the association that they are subject to the open meetings law when they function as the consortium agreement board.

Randy Peck, president of the administrators association, said the group will talk about allowing the consortium group to dissolve.

“My intention is to comply with the AG’s opinion,” he said.

Its meeting Jan. 4 in the Lincoln Public Schools Administration Building board room will be open, he said. The group will talk then about what to do with the consortium and the 1 percent funds collected from the ESUs.

The opinion, he said, “is fine with me. It clarified some things on the interlocal agreement.”

Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.