McMaster rules for open caucus meetings

By Jim Davenport

The Associated Press

COLUMBIA - Republican Caucus meetings in the General Assembly should be open to the public unless the rules are changed, Attorney General Henry McMaster said in an opinion Monday.

"It is our opinion that the Majority Caucus is subject to the Freedom of Information Act," McMaster wrote.

The nonbinding legal opinion is good news because those meetings should be open, said Bill Rogers, executive director of the South Carolina Press Association.

With closed meetings, "the public is not privy to discussions on how public policy is formed," Rogers said.

McMaster's opinion was requested last summer by Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, after reporters were kicked out of House GOP caucus meetings as Republicans discussed candidates who wanted to become the new House speaker.

Republicans hold a majority in the House and Senate, but the opinion dealt with Rutherford's questions on whether the House Majority Caucus was a public body subject to the state's open records and meetings laws.

McMaster said the caucus is supported in whole or part by public funds and that makes it a public body.

House Majority Leader Jim Merrill, R-Charleston, had argued his caucus isn't supported by public money. McMaster noted, however, that Merrill also acknowledged that caucus staff use publicly funded office space and equipment. That's enough to subject the caucus to the Freedom of Information law, McMaster wrote.

Merrill said the caucus would ask House Speaker Bobby Harrell, a Charleston Republican and former House majority leader, to bill them for any expense not already paid through caucus funds. The caucus, he said, has never taken a binding vote behind closed doors and lacks the power or desire to do so.

The legislature can change the law to get around the open meetings and records law, McMaster said. That would provide the Legislature with the same types of exemptions other states have for political caucuses, McMaster said. He also noted courts in other states have deferred to operating rules legislatures set up.

Merrill said no decision has been made to do that. For now, he says, the caucus will continue to meet in the open as it has all but one time this session.

Jay Bender, a Columbia lawyer who works on open meetings legislation, said it will be interesting to see how the legislature responds.

"I think it will take legislation and not rules" changes, he said. "And I think they would have to have a full-scale piece of legislation to go through."

With two weeks remaining in the session, that would be tough to do.

Republican Gov. Mark Sanford agrees with the decision, spokesman Joel Sawyer said. Sunshine, he said, is "the ultimate disinfectant in the political process."

After his inauguration in 2003, Sanford tried to close his first Cabinet meeting. But a legal briefing from McMaster's FOI expert changed his mind. Since then, he's kept meetings open to the public even when some lawyers have advised him to close them.

"The more business done in the public's view, the better," Sawyer said.