The Lane Community College Board is again in conflict, now over a disagreement about whether a meeting months ago violated open meeting law.
The complaint was heard before the Oregon Government Ethics Commission last week.
Oregon governments are allowed to meet behind closed doors to receive legal advice and review complaints against employees or their own members, if they provide public notice. Those types of meetings are called executive sessions.
On June 3, board member Austin Fölnagy publicly accused the board of violating those rules. He walked out of the meeting and returned to a later public meeting the same day to read a statement saying he believed the board had broken the law. He later filed a complaint.
Fölnagy said the meeting was to hear a complaint about an employee and that person should have been offered a chance to decide whether they wanted a public or private hearing first.
That disagreement came after months of tense budget meetings where board members had to agree on ways to close a $4 million deficit.
The board was also facing an accreditation review at the time for governance issues and an investigation that found that the board had engaged in bullying and discrimination against the college’s president.
Fölnagy told ethics commissioners on Oct. 9 that he believed the board’s lawyers gave incorrect advice about whether the subject of the executive session had been given proper notice.
He also accused other board members of retaliation. He said they had made demeaning comments about him, such as suggesting he didn’t understand what the executive session was about and should be quiet and listen to the professionals about open meeting law.
"We should be able to stand up for Oregon public meeting laws,” Fölnagy said, “and should do so without bullying and intimidation from our own colleagues."
A few board members that disagreed with Fölnagy also testified at the Ethics Commission. Trustee Kevin Alltucker read a statement on behalf of himself and board members Julie Weismann and Steve Mital, that said the executive session was to hear about a complaint against a person on LCC’s budget committee.
He said heading into the June 3 meeting, board members did not know how to proceed with the complaint, or what their options were under the law and were hoping to get legal advice.
He said the board’s legal counsel offered Fölnagy solutions to address the concerns he raised about potential meeting violations, including rescheduling the meeting, before he walked out.
"I found that problematic,” Alltucker said. “Fölnagy had received the same notice as every other trustee. Yet, he apparently waited until the executive session began to raise his objections."
The Ethics Commission voted to open an investigation into every board member except Fölnagy.
Most open meeting violations, especially if there is evidence they are unintentional, are usually resolved with a letter of education.
Lane Community College holds the license for KLCC but has no part in KLCC's editorial process and does not review news content before publication. This story was edited by an outside editor from the Northwest News Network.
