Alan Wilson (copy) (copy)

S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson's threat to sue or prosecute the Charleston County School District over possible violations of the state's open meetings law should be the first in a string of such efforts. File/Nick Reynolds/Staff

We don’t know whether the Charleston County School Board ignores the state Freedom of Information Act more than most of our state's school boards or just gets more news coverage, so its sins are more noticeable. What we do know is that it routinely ignores the law — and too often abuses its spirit even when it stays technically within the law.

So we’re delighted by S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson’s threat to sue or even prosecute the board if it can’t explain what Mr. Wilson says look like blatant violations of the open meetings law.

As The Post and Courier’s Hillary Flynn and Avery Wilks report, Mr. Wilson sent a letter to the board on Tuesday giving it the opportunity to reply to concerns raised by parents that it changed its agenda shortly before two July 18 meetings. If it did, that would violate the law that says public bodies must provide their agenda 24 hours before the meeting and may change that agenda only by a two-thirds vote after the meeting starts.

The parents allege that an item on the July 18 committee of the whole agenda to let the superintendent make changes to the district’s policy manual without school board approval was changed so significantly at the last minute that the notice didn’t comply with state law. That might sound like nitpicking, but courts have ruled that public bodies have no more right to mislead than to omit.

The parents also allege that the manual changes, a board governance timeline and an item involving prevention of disease transmission were added to the full board agenda at the last minute.

If true, those violations are hardly the most egregious the board has made: Last summer, for instance, it met behind closed doors to hear a health briefing on COVID-19 — which is clearly not allowed in the too-broad list of topics state and local boards can discuss in secret. And while the board might have been technically acting legally, it broke public trust egregiously when it met in secret in December to force out then-Superintendent Geritta Postlewait and claim she had voluntarily resigned — a claim that is fully discredited by the departure agreement.

But Mr. Wilson’s involvement represents the first indication that he might be heeding our call last year to turn his attention away from the politically expedient habit of threatening local governments for violating culture-war laws and instead focus on the much more clear-cut, frequent and dangerous violations of the public meeting and public records law.

Even if it turns out that the school board didn’t violate the law last month, Mr. Wilson’s letter is an important statement that should be heeded by local governments and school boards across the state, which usually lose when they’re challenged in court but are too rarely challenged because few individuals are willing to pay the attorney's fees it takes to enforce compliance with the law.

When necessary, he wrote, “this Office can and will bring suit against public bodies, who flout their duties under FOIA. Moreover, a consistent pattern of FOIA violations can lead to possible criminal prosecutions for misconduct in office, which carry stiff criminal penalties. In short, FOIA cannot be ignored or circumvented, and this Office will work to ensure that the law is upheld.”

Our one disappointment is the letter's assertion that “Generally speaking, this Office does not possess the resources to enforce FOIA, except through the issuance of advisory opinions, leaving to private citizens the ability to enforce FOIA through court actions.”

It’s certainly true that the attorney general’s office isn't large enough to file a lawsuit every time a governing body violates the law, but Mr. Wilson would be able to challenge more of them if he spent less time and resources joining other states in lawsuits against the federal government or pursuing strained interpretations of state law.

The FOI violations that occur every week are pretty much slam-dunk cases. We simply need a little enforcement to convince governments to start doing the people’s business in pubic.

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