Kline (AG-KS) Defends Private Meetings with right-wing BOE members...

[KansDem]

Attorney General Phill Kline says he did nothing wrong by meeting privately with six members of the State Board of Education.

Kansas law requires that any meeting of six or more of the board's ten members be held in public.

Kline says he held two meetings Tuesday, each attended by three members of the board's conservative majority. His topic was putting stickers in science textbooks describing evolution as a theory, an idea which Kline favors.

Not invited to the talks were the board's four moderate members. The omission led one of them, Sue Gamble, to suggest the state's open-meetings law had been violated in spirit.
(more)
http://www.wibw.com/news/headlines/1247177.html

AG Phil Kline ran unsuccessfully against Dennis Moore (D, 3rd District-Kansas) in 2000. Now, as Attorney General for Kansas, he's been meeting in secret with fundie BOE members about putting these stickers on state science books. Sue Gamble, a moderate Republican, has been working to reinstate evolution in the science curriculum, and, one hopes, repair Kansas' image as a backwoods cul-de-sac of slackjawed snake handlers...

How "Republican" of Kline:
Kline denies any violation, saying no-one kept the meetings a secret.

Yeah, Phil. You just didn't extend any invitations to the four moderate members, so how would they know about them!!!

Phuck you, Fil!

[atommom]

1. Here's more ... he's pissed off the media...

Six media organizations, including the Lawrence Journal-World, on Friday demanded that the State Board of Education members who met secretly with Atty. Gen. Phill Kline provide details on what occurred at those meetings, admit they violated the state open meetings law and promise not to do it again.

Mike Merriam, a Topeka attorney representing the media, said the meetings were "in intentional and direct defiance" of the Kansas Open Meetings Act and that a maneuver by Kline to comply with the law was a "crude attempt to skirt policy of the state of Kansas."
<snip>
"My understanding is that the same topics were discussed in each group; that the public is unable to determine the extent to which consensus was attempted for the obvious reason that the meetings were closed; that only those members who are widely considered conservative members of the Board were included, which also suggests attempted consensus, or at least like-minded discussion," Merriam said.

Kline has said he invited only the conservatives because he thought the moderates would prefer to speak with other officials.

http://www.ljworld.com/section/stateregional/story/196000

Kline has also said that he welcomes this opportunity to "have a talk about what the open meetings law actually means." :mad: He clearly doesn't think it means very much.