Assembly will consider allowing secret meetings By Paula R. Kincaid The Presbyterian Layman Volume 33, Number 3 Posted May 22, 2000 Commissioners to the 212th General Assembly in Long Beach, Calif., will decide whether the denomination’s current Open Meeting Policy will apply to “all General Assembly entities whenever and for whatever purpose they meet,” or whether a proposed policy should restrict public access to “non-business” meetings. At its February meeting, the General Assembly Council approved a “Media and Visitor Policy for Non-Business Gatherings,” which allows some portions of meetings to be closed to visitors and media. While the proposed policy states that “all plenary sessions are open,” it says that in “small groups whose purpose is the sharing of personal issues of faith and life, the discussion may be closed to media representatives and visitors at the choice of the small group participants.” Loopholes proposed Members of the General Assembly Council’s executive committee had several concerns about loopholes in the proposed policy, but took no actions to close them. Council member Thomas E. Fisher asked for definitions of terms used in the policy including “non-business gathering,” “active participation,” and “small.” “The language was broad so we could make it applicable to a variety of situations,” said Joanne Hull, a member of the executive committee and a member of the Advisory Committee on the News which drafted the proposed policy. “We need to provide a little bit of wiggle room to provide for all of the possibilities,” said John Silbert, chair of the advisory committee. Overture: Openness is best Taking the other side of the issue, the Presbytery of Huntingdon believes it is “in the best interests of the whole church for the Open Meeting Policy to apply consistently whenever the church gathers in an official capacity, and that meetings of the General Assembly or its entities be closed only when the specified conditions pertain,” according to an overture it has sent to the 2000 General Assembly. The overture requests that the current Open Meeting Policy “shall apply to all General Assembly entities whenever and for whatever purpose they meet, including all sessions of the General Assembly and its committees, and that the only exceptions to this policy shall be those specifically delineated ….” The only exceptions for closing a meeting are property negotiation, personnel, civil and criminal litigation, or security. “Particular General Assembly entities, which are accountable to and supported by the denomination, have operated in conflict with the clear intent of the General Assembly’s Open Meeting Policy,” the overture says. “At a time when the Presbyterian Church (USA) is attempting to build a level of trust that will allow it to find unity within diversity, it is imperative that the General Assembly and its entities conduct their work and ministry ‘with a spirit of openness and vulnerability to public scrutiny,’” the overture says. Secrecy opposed A second overture, from the Presbytery of San Joaquin, requests openness as the norm for General Assembly meetings. Overture 00-29 asks the General Assembly to “discontinue the practice of closing the entire initial meeting of the assembly committees to observers and enforce the one-hour limitation on such closures, commencing with the 213th General Assembly.” The initial committee meetings at assemblies were exempted from the Open Meeting Policy by Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, who ruled in favor of the organizational meeting provision (C.4.f) in the Standing Rules of the General Assembly. The provision states that the “initial meeting of each assembly committee shall be an organizational meeting in private session for up to one hour for the purpose of developing intergroup dynamics and determining procedural matters, such as the adoption of the committee’s agenda and consideration of the style in which the committee plans to operate. During this executive session, business items before the committee shall not be discussed or acted upon.” The overture from San Joaquin notes the “up to an hour” has evolved into the entire evening and often “includes an overview of the committee’s work, which is in conflict with the stipulation that ‘business items before the committee shall not be discussed.’” Ethical issues The rationale of the overture quotes from the Open Meeting Policy and the Standards of Ethical Conduct, which call on ordained officers in the Presbyterian Church (USA) to “conduct [their] ministr[ies] so that nothing need be hidden from a governing body or colleagues in ministry” or “from sisters and brothers in Christ.” “Actions taken in secret breed mistrust in an already fragile ecclesiastical climate,” reads the overture.

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