Meeting at Marion restaurant was illegal; police helped keep press away | Opinion
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Police raid of Kansas newspaper
A police raid Aug. 11, 2023, on a local newspaper in Marion, Kansas, sparked First Amendment concerns across the country.
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I’ve written twice in the past week about the shocking and most likely illegal raid that Marion police carried out in a campaign to terrorize the local newspaper, so I’m going to take a break from that today.
Let’s go back a few weeks to a simpler time in Marion, before it became the national poster child for police abuse of power and press intimidation.
Today, I’m going to write about an incident involving the same cast of characters — when the Marion police chief facilitated an illegal meeting at the instigation of the same restaurateur who precipitated the newspaper raid.
How do I know an illegal meeting occurred?
Easy. The Marion police put it on their Facebook page — with four photos.
On Aug. 1, they posted this:
“Kari’s Kitchen hosted a meeting with U.S. Congressman Jake LaTurner and District 70 Kansas Representative Scott Hill for a meet and greet. Thank you Kari Newell for the invite.
Along with Marion Police Chief G. Cody, Col. Duane McCarty, Marion County Sheriff Jeff Soyez, Under Sheriff Larry Starkey was Marion Councilman Jerry Kline, Marion City Administrator Brogan Jones, Marion County Commissioners David Crofoot, David Mueller and Ken Becker, and many citizens from Marion County.
Thanks Again Kari’s Kitchen for hosting the meeting.”
What they didn’t put in their post was that Newell got Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody to chase away a reporter and publisher from the Marion County Record under the color of authority of law.
Reminiscent of Wichita Trump campaign rally ejections
The situation is somewhat reminiscent of the 2018 Donald Trump rally at the Century II in Wichita, where a couple of Trump goons in tailored suits moved through the crowd, pointing out people — mostly young and minorities — who they wanted removed, and police removed them.
But that was different. It was a campaign event, which is technically private, so all you could do was try to look older and whiter and MAGA’er if you wanted to stay.
The Marion event was a governmental exercise, not a campaign one — a sitting congressman interacting with his constituents on matters of federal and local affairs.
The congressman’s staff had actually invited news coverage, but said there was nothing they could do when Newell wouldn’t allow the Record staffers into her restaurant.
There’s an argument to be made here that by consenting to allow the use of her property for the meeting, Newell had consented to its use as a public forum.
But we don’t even need to have that argument.
The meeting was illegal anyway because, if you’ll refer back to the Police Department’s Facebook post, three members of the Marion County Commission were in attendance.
That represents a majority of the five commissioners, which makes it an open meeting.
Government meetings in Kansas are governed by what is whimsically called the Kansas Open Meetings Act. It’s a bit ironic because its mostly about when government can close a meeting.
It’s worth noting here that “because Kari Newell said so” is not one of the legal exemptions allowing a closed meeting.
Abuse of ‘social gathering’ exemption in law
There have been several changes to the act over the years.
For example, it used to say that a majority of a quorum of a government body constituted a meeting. On a five-member board, like the Marion County Commission, that’s two members.
Faced with the horrifying prospect of having to discuss the public’s business in front of the public, Sedgwick County went so far as to alter its definition of a quorum from three of its five members to four.
But loopholes like that became moot when the Legislature changed the law from “majority of a quorum” to “majority.”
And attorney general opinions over the years have softened the law further, carving out an exemption for “social gatherings.”
What that means is if the majority of a public body shows up at the same dog fight or strip club, it’s not an official meeting as long as government business isn’t discussed.
The social gathering exemption is of course wildly abused — politicians talk business all the time at social gatherings — but it is what it is, and it won’t change until someone challenges it in court.
In the case of the Marion meeting, it’s beyond belief that a congressman and local officials didn’t discuss any aspects of government policy affecting the county. That’s literally what they were there to do.
But because the press was excluded, you and I don’t get to know what they talked about.
Bottom line, it’s illegal to exclude anyone, public or press, from a County Commission meeting, unless they’re actively disrupting the proceedings. And the staffers from the Record weren’t doing that.
So we now have more probable cause to believe that the Kansas Open Meetings Act was violated on Aug. 1 than Cody did when he got the search warrant to rifle the newspaper’s computers, phones and documents, which was also done at Newell’s behest.
To KBI Director Tony Mattivi: I will very much be looking forward to your investigation of the Marion County commissioners on police-provided evidence that they participated in an illegal meeting, and of Police Chief Cody for illegally excluding members of the press from that meeting. I’m hoping it will involve seizing their computers and phones.
Because as you yourself said after the Marion Police raided the newspaper, “no one is above the law.”
This story was originally published August 18, 2023 at 5:17 AM with the headline "Meeting at Marion restaurant was illegal; police helped keep press away | Opinion."
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