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ENROLLED ORIGINAL
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A RESOLUTION
26-91
IN THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
April 1, 2025
To declare the existence of an emergency with respect to the need to amend the Open Meetings
Act to clarify the definition of meeting, to provide for a public body’s ability to be briefed
about potential terrorist or public health threats so long as no official action is taken, to
exempt from the act meetings between the Council and the Mayor provided that no
official action is taken at such meetings, and to provide that a meeting shall be deemed
open to the public if the public body takes steps reasonably calculated to allow the public
to view or hear the meeting while the meeting is taking place, or, if doing so is not
technologically feasible, as soon thereafter as reasonably practicable.
RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, That this
resolution may be cited as the “Open Meetings Clarification Emergency Declaration Resolution
of 2025”.
Sec. 2. (a) The Open Meetings Act, effective March 31, 2011 (D.C. Law 18-350; D.C.
Official Code § 2-571 et seq.), became effective on March 31, 2011.
(b) The Open Meetings Act requires that any gathering of a quorum of a public body
where members consider, conduct, or advise on public business offers the opportunity for the
public to observe the meeting. The public must be given proper notice of these meetings and
afforded the opportunity to review recordings of these meetings upon request. The Open
Meetings Act also exempts several governmental entities from these requirements based on the
definition of the term “public body.” Exempted entities include the District of Columbia courts,
the Mayor’s cabinet, and Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners (“ANC”), but not the Council.
(c) In recent months, the District government has had to deal with a variety of
consequential, large-scale business and economic development propositions, most notably, the
effort to retain Monumental Sports and Entertainment in the District. This effort involved
significant negotiations between the parties, much of which had to be kept confidential until
agreements in principle were reached.
(d) The District is currently facing the prospect of having to cut approximately $1.1
billion from its FY 2025 budget (in the middle of the fiscal year) based on Congress’s passage of
a continuing resolution that requires federal spending to be consistent with FY 2024 levels and
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Congress’s choice to treat the District as a federal agency as opposed to allowing the District to
spend local funds at approved levels as had been the case for many years prior.
(e) Each of the described circumstances called for a certain level of awareness and, in the
case of the budget, coordination among the District’s elected officials – including the members
of the Council – to develop a workable strategy to effectively respond to the situation. While
such coordination is relatively simple for the Executive and the Office of the Attorney General,
since these entities are not “public bodies” under the Open Meetings Act, current law creates
significant barriers for 13 members of the Council to prepare to function as a single unit in times
of crisis.
(f) Beyond that, there is a legitimate expectation that further circumstances like those
described in subsections (c) and (d) of this section are imminent and will require a significant
degree of organizational nimbleness on the part of the Council, as well as other public bodies
within the District government, in order to respond in a timely and appropriate manner. For this
reason, several U.S. states exempt completely, or make special exceptions for, their state
legislatures with respect to open meetings laws.
(g) While the official action of a public body to make or adopt public policy is, and
should be, required to be made public, the preparation put into moving toward official action,
including background research and briefings, organizational discussions, and information
gathering (under certain circumstances) does not necessarily need to be. In fact, in certain
circumstances, particularly circumstances related to threats to the health, safety, and welfare of
the public or members of the public body, provisional and pre-decisional information should not
be disclosed prematurely.
(h) This emergency legislation is particularly necessary in the current political climate to
allow the Council to be briefed as a body in a timely manner, to develop appropriate responses to
rapidly unfolding issues, and to ensure that other public bodies in the District are able to receive,
discuss and analyze relevant information securely, while also ensuring that the process for taking
any official action with respect to that information is conducted publicly.
Sec. 3. The Council of the District of Columbia determines that the circumstances
enumerated in section 2 constitute emergency circumstances making it necessary that the Open
Meetings Clarification Emergency Amendment Act of 2025 be adopted after a single reading.
Sec. 4. This resolution shall take effect immediately