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• "We oftentimes get bad cases. But for the most part I can tell you, the violations are occurring but they are unintentional," Jackley said.
• The panel decided to look into laws that prevent some documents from being made public and the fees charged by agencies to provide public records. It also will examine laws that govern when boards and commissions can close meetings and require them to give advance notice of all official meetings.
• The task force plans to meet again Sept. 12. It will eventually recommend proposed changes to the 2013 Legislature.
• State law requires that state and local boards and commissions give notice of a meeting and its agenda at least 24 hours before the meeting. Such meetings can be

closed to the public only to discuss personnel issues, student performance, consultations with legal counsel about litigation or contracts, employee contract negotiations, pricing strategies by publicly owned businesses and some economic development matters.
• A law passed in 2004 allows local prosecutors to refer complaints about open meetings to an Open Meetings Commission, a panel of five state's attorneys who can publicly reprimand public officials for improperly closing a meeting. Representatives of local governments and school boards said officials want to comply with the law, but sometimes are uncertain about when and why meetings can be closed.
• Diane Worrall, executive director of the South Dakota Association of Towns and Townships, said elected supervisors in most of the state's 913 townships meet in the home of a supervisor, so public notice is difficult to provide because it is posted at that home. Supervisors in many rural townships also are the ones who do the work to fix roads and bridges, so supervisors who hold a legal meeting wonder if they are breaking the law when they meet later to fix a road culvert.
• The task force will look at ways to provide local officials with improved education on the open meetings law.
• Until 2009, South Dakota law assumed all government records were confidential except for records government agencies were required to keep. The Legislature that year passed a law presuming that records are open to public inspection, but it also listed many kinds of records that must be kept confidential.
• Confidential records include medical and financial information about people, student records, trade secrets and security information that would endanger the public if released. Another provision says information will not be released on correspondence, calendars, appointment logs, working papers and records of telephone calls of public officials and government employees.

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