LEBANON - Clearcreek Township officials violated state law by holding secret meetings, a Warren County judge ruled Tuesday.

Warren County Common Pleas Court Judge James Flannery found that township officials violated Ohio's Open Meetings Act on multiple occasions when they attended informal meetings in the township administrator's office prior to the public session to discuss agenda items and other matters.

The judge, noting that violations are "likely to reoccur," issued an injunction against future violations.

"Public bodies are not free to ignore the Sunshine Law no matter how beneficently motivated," Flannery wrote in his ruling.

The law requires that public officials take official action and conduct all "deliberations upon official business" only in open meetings unless the subject matter is specifically exempt by law.

It defines meetings as any prearranged discussion of public business that includes a quorum of the public body.

Chris Finney

The suit, brought by resident Jack Chrisman against the township and current trustee Glenn "Ed" Wade, accused township officials of violating state law on six occasions in 2009-2011 when public business was discussed by a majority of the three-member board in the pre-meeting sessions.

The public was not invited, nor did trustees give notice of the meetings or file minutes of what was discussed, he argued.

Flannery found violations to have occurred in four of the six occasions.

Township officials, he found, engaged in pre-meeting deliberations regarding an employee's pay raise, contracts to hire companies to paint the township's government center and provide lawn care at Patricia Allyn Park and a change to the township's zoning laws regarding nuisances.

In two other cases, involving alleged deliberations on a 2011 decision to switch the township's electric service provider and an agreement to create a self-insurance health program for township employees, the judge found insufficient evidence to prove violations occurred.

Chrisman's attorney, Chris Finney, said the judge's ruling has far-reaching consequences for government agencies across the state.

"The issue isn't Clearcreek Township; it's open government," he said. "We sent a clear call to townships, counties and school boards across the state that open meetings laws must be followed."

Chrisman first filed the case in 2011, but Flannery initially tossed it out at the request of the township, saying there was no evidence the trustees were conducting formal deliberations at the meetings.

Chrisman appealed the case and won. The two-day trial took place Jan. 30-31.

The next battle will come at an upcoming hearing to be scheduled to decide how much, if any, the township will be ordered to pay in attorney fees and damages.

Open meeting violations carry fines of up to $500 for each violation, plus attorney's fees. However, courts have discretion to reduce or eliminate attorney's fees if it finds that officials reasonably believed they were not violating the law or that their actions served public policy.

John D. Smith, the attorney representing the township, argued the pre-meeting sessions were merely "fact-finding" sessions and that officials viewed the gatherings as a "well-intentioned effort to efficiently and responsibly discharge their duties as public officials, not to deliberate in secret."

In his ruling, the judge wrote he found "absolutely no evidence" that the violations were "mean spirited" or deliberate and that township officials "legitimately wanted to know more information to be able to do their job to the best of their ability."

Smith said the trial could have been avoided if former Trustee Cathy Anspach and Linda Oda, the township's publicly elected fiscal officer, had raised the issue to trustees and argued their motives to be politically driven.

Anspach testified that trustees would discuss what they thought about issues and occasionally remove items from the agenda.

Oda testified that officials dismissed her concerns that the meetings violated state law, but admitted she did not share her concerns with the township's legal counsel nor bring them up in a public meeting.

"Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent to make a mountain out of a molehill," said Smith. "You look at these violations and of course there's nothing monumental in any of this. Clearly, they used poor form."

Finney said the township could have resolved the issue for less than $20,000 by admitting guilt and settling the case when it was first filed in 2011. He's now asking for more than $250,000 in attorney's fees.

"It was John Smith and the trustees who decided to go on this warfare that has lasted three years to defend practices that they knew from day one were impermissible," he said. "It was their choice, not mine, to run this thing on."