We have detected a movement among some of Minnesota’s elected bodies—school boards, county boards, and city councils—to halt the broadcasting of public comment periods held during their open meetings. In these situations, government entities selectively broadcast only a portion of their meetings, while those segments reserved for public comment are excluded from broadcast. 

We don’t think that’s good enough for a functioning democracy. No matter where a member of the public views a meeting from—in the city council chambers, or on a home laptop—everyone should be able to see the same meeting content. If a public body chooses to broadcast its open meetings, then it should broadcast the entire meeting—including any public comment period that is included.

Currently, broadcasting open meetings is discretionary, unless pandemic-era meeting rules are in effect. In 2023, we proposed legislation that would require elected bodies to broadcast their open meetings in non-pandemic situations, too. The proposal would also require that public comments periods—if held—be held during open meetings, so that they could be broadcast along with all other meeting content. MNCOGI got substantial public support from editorial boards at the Star Tribune and other newspapers for that stance.

Our efforts didn’t get anywhere in 2023. As is common during budgeting years, measures like this often get delayed until the following year’s “policy” session. It is our intention to vigorously pursue this matter in 2024.

MNCOGI is suing the city of Minneapolis and various city officials to wrest free information about their “coaching” of Minneapolis police officers for policy violations.

The issue was brought violently to the fore by the murder of George Floyd. After that traumatic event, the public learned that ex-Officer Derek Chauvin had previously used the same knee-on-neck technique and that more than 20 complaints had been filed against him over the course of his Minneapolis police career. But little was known—or is known—about the substance of complaints.

Under Minnesota’s Data Practices Act, the results of an investigation of complaints or charges against public employees only become public if the employee is disciplined and the discipline becomes final. If an employee is not disciplined, the public never gets to see the details of the matter and can only learn that a complaint or charge was made against the employee and how that complaint or charge was resolved.  

In MNCOGI v. City of Minneapolis, et. al., we argue that the City of Minneapolis has failed to produce public records relating to the use of “coaching” as a police disciplinary action. Documented coaching of policy violations is indistinguishable from written warnings, which Civil Service Commission Rules identify as a form of police discipline. We contend the city should not be allowed to use semantics to shroud officer misconduct.

The suit is ongoing. Most recently, the judge in the case ordered the discovery process to proceed. That has generated some important answers from the city to our questions but others remain unanswered and the case continues. Stay tuned.

We remain concerned about the outcome—the Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) convinced lawmakers to reclassify a great deal of its investigative data that previously had been public. But MNCOGI helped blunt the initiative’s worst effects.

Citing concerns that it frequently receives spurious or politically motivated complaints about people and nonprofits, the Legislative Auditor proposed to withhold information about virtually anything they do, so long as a final report on the matter never gets issued.

In MNCOGI’s view, that would result in an untenable situation in which neither journalists nor interested citizens would be able to “audit to the auditors,” by reviewing documentation on complaints that the office never pursued. MNCOGI staunchly opposed that outcome.

In direct negotiations with the OLA and by working with key legislators and other key advocates, MNCOGI convinced the Legislature to more narrowly tailor the OLA’s request, keeping secret only identifying information about the individuals or nonprofits that are the subject of unreviewed allegations.

We don’t regard this as a complete victory, but we do feel we successfully kept open an important window into the highly important behind-the-scenes work of the OLA.

In 2023, MNCOGI was at the center of legislative negotiations over how transparently the new agency that regulates how legal marijuana will operate.

For instance, as originally drafted, the legalization bill contained broad carve-outs for all closed investigative data related to past marijuana prosecutions. Also as initially proposed, it would have treated marijuana regulation and licensing more privately and secretively than has been the case for liquor-license holders.

With big help from unpaid citizen lobbyist Rich Neumeister and groups like the Minnesota Newspaper Association and the Minnesota Broadcasters Association, MNCOGI successfully helped steer the legislation toward accountability and preserving the public’s right to know.

By James Eli Shiffer, the Star Tribune’s watchdog and data editor, and brand-new COGI board member

Nine months after he arrived to run a 300-employee department for the city of Minneapolis, Gregory Stubbs abruptly quit. The City Council gave him $65,000 and gave the public no explanation.

The Star Tribune reporters who cover Minneapolis thought they had an easy way to find out why Stubbs left. They sent a public records request to the city invoking a new provision of the Data Practices Act designed to shed light on the departure of “public officials” who leave in the midst of scandal. The law had been changed following outrage over the pricy and unexplained severance package given to a school official in Burnsville.

But the city of Minneapolis had a surprising response: the city’s director of regulatory services isn’t a public official, as defined by the law. The Star Tribune went to IPAD for an opinion, and the agency agreed with the city. As it turns out, the law was drafted in such a way that it excluded most of Minneapolis’ top officials, including the police and fire chiefs. Reporter Eric Roper turned that situation to his advantage, writing a story about the loophole and getting a key lawmaker on the record that it would be changed.

The Legislature followed through this year by broadening the definition of “public official” to eliminate any doubt that it covered Minnesota’s largest city. In an era when lawmakers are making more and more exemptions to the Data Practices Act, this was one significant advance for the public’s right to know.

It took weeks before the Stubbs documents arrived at the Star Tribune. They were heavily redacted, but  they documented the sex discrimination and ethics complaints that preceded Stubbs’ departure. On Aug. 23, nearly a year after we first asked for the records, the Star Tribune published the story on the metro cover.

I learned several lessons from this journey: Read the law. Hold lawmakers accountable for their pledge of openness. Keep up the pressure on governments to release records. And when you get the records, publish a story. It lets everybody know we mean business.