VIDALIA — Louisiana Press Association Executive Director Pam Mitchell said residents’ basic right to attend open meetings stems from the state constitution.

“Our ideas are from the law that meetings are open unless they are specifically closed,” she said. “Open meeting laws are pretty simple.”

According to the Louisiana State Constitution, no person shall be denied the right to observe the deliberations of public bodies except in cases established by law.

LPA attorney Ryan Brown said even though Louisiana’s open meeting laws are very straightforward, there are still many issues people face when trying to attend meetings.

“Most of the issues we have involve public bodies going into executive session,” he said. “Sometimes public bodies will go into the sessions for reasons that are not in the constitution.”

According to the state constitution, executive sessions, or closed meetings, can only be held if two-thirds of the members present vote to meet in private, and the body announces a reason for holding the meeting in private that is listed in the open meeting laws.

No votes or decisions can occur during an executive session.

Examples of what constitutes an executive session would be information of lawsuits, security matters, extraordinary emergencies and discussions of a person’s character, competence or mental health.

Mitchell and Brown both said discussions of a person’s character or mental health cause the most problems with open meeting laws.

“The person who the public body is discussing has to be notified in writing 24 hours before the meeting,” Mitchell said. “It is up to this individual to decide whether the meeting is open or closed.”

Brown said there have been many situations in which public bodies have closed meetings when they shouldn’t have.

Mitchell also said since public bodies cannot vote during executive session, she has run into problems with the bodies breaking this law.

“They are not even suppose to take a straw vote,” she said.

Louisiana law also states that the public body that is meeting has to provide the public a 24-hour notice the time, date, place and agenda for the meeting.

Adding items to the meeting’s agenda that were not previously there is also allowed if a member of the public body makes a motion to add the issue and provides a reason for it, the public is given an opportunity to comment before the members vote on the motion to add it and the motion to discuss the issue is approved by all present members of the body.

Brown said overall, Louisiana’s open meeting laws are exactly what they should be, it’s the public bodies who don’t obey them that cause the problems.

“I have looked at open meeting laws for other states, and Louisiana is pretty straightforward,” he said. “Obviously you run into problems, and there are some gray areas, but the law is simple. The public bodies have to have open meetings.”