Many reporters in Minnesota carry four cards with them while gathering the news.

The wallet-sized cards are produced by the Minnesota Newspaper Association and entitled “What to do until the lawyer gets here.”

These cards are important to news reporters because the cards lay out, in a very concise format, the basics of the laws that involve the gathering of news. The cards explain in layman’s words what kind of information must legally be released to the public and what kind of information may be withheld.

Two of the cards describe how to collect data from Minnesota courts, and law enforcement and government agencies. A third card describes the Minnesota Shield Law and how to handle confidential and unpublished information, as well as about gathering information at the scene of a disaster, accident or arrest.

The fourth card in the series may likely be the most dog-eared, because reporters often face questions surrounding the Minnesota Open Meeting Law.

The law, an important tool in keeping government actions transparent to the public, presumes that the meetings of all public bodies and their committees are open to attendance by members of the public, including the media.

Members of public bodies who violate the law by improperly closing a meeting can face civil fines and attorney fees.

According to the MNA cards, the only reasons a public meeting may be closed is:

• To consult with the government’s attorney on pending litigation — not just threatened litigation. If the attorney is not present, the meeting can never be closed for this type of discussion.

• For preliminary consideration of charges against an employee; subsequent meetings must be open, though a school board may close most formal hearings on teacher and student discipline.

• To evaluate an employee's performance; the public body must give a report on its conclusions at the next open meeting.

• Strategy sessions for labor negotiations during contract negotiations with a public employee unions. These meetings must be recorded, and the time and place must be announced at an open meeting.

The above four reasons for closing a government meeting are cited the most often. The cards list six other reasons for closing a meeting. Those reasons, which are cited infrequently, range from discussing active criminal investigative data to hospital boards considering marketing strategy.

A recent meeting of the International Falls City Council concerned us when it was closed to the public. The meeting was closed to allow the council to discuss pending litigation involving an upcoming appeal court argument scheduled for Nov. 12.

However, upon opening the meeting, the council approved a petition seeking annexation of a foreign trade zone and surrounding area. The FTZ is also included in an annexation proposal by Ranier.

City officials justified discussing the annexation proposal in closed session because they said the FTZ was discussed in a Dispute Resolution Board hearing conducted by the Minnesota Department of Transportation in connection with a plan by Koochiching County to reconstruct the northern entrance to Highway 332.

While the resolution board may have mentioned the FTZ in the hearing, we don’t believe that annexation of the area fell within the purview of allowable discussion at the closed session.

Instead, we believe that the city council should have openly discussed the idea of annexing the FTZ and potential road sites surrounding it. What would have been the harm? If it was a good idea behind closed doors, why not in front of the public?

Minnesota’s Open Meeting Law, according to the Minnesota Supreme Court, has three purposes:

• To prohibit actions being taken at a secret meeting where it is impossible for the interested public to become fully informed about a public board’s decisions or to detect improper influences;

• To assure the public’s right to be informed;

• To afford the public an opportunity to present its views to the public body.

We believe International Falls residents would have been served had the annexation discussion been conducted in open session.