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A RESOLUTION
26-379
IN THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
March 31, 2026
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 2026”.
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 April 2025, the Council passed the Open Meetings Clarification Emergency
Amendment Act of 2025, effective April 7, 2025 (D.C. Act 26-41; 72 DCR 4070). The
accompanying temporary act, the Open Meetings Clarification Temporary Amendment Act of
2025, effective August 16, 2025 (D.C. Law 26-24; 72 DCR 7532), took effect in August 2025,
and will expire on March 29, 2026.
(d) Since early 2025, 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 and the negotiation of a deal
with the NFL’s Washington Commanders to build a new state-of-the-art stadium and mixed-use
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development on the RFK campus. These efforts involved significant negotiations between the
parties, much of which had to be kept confidential until agreements in principle were reached.
(e) The District also continues to face unprecedented federal involvement and
interference in local affairs, beginning last year with Congress’s passage of a continuing
resolution that required federal spending to be consistent with FY 2024 levels and 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, which created the prospect of
having to cut approximately $1.1 billion from the FY 2025 budget (in the middle of the fiscal
year), and continuing with increased federal law enforcement presence leading to purported
federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department in summer 2025. In 2026, the federal
actions have continued with Congress passing (and the president signing) a joint resolution
expressing disapproval with the District’s plan to decouple from provisions of the One Big
Beautiful Bill Act for Tax Year 2025.
(f) Each of the described circumstances called for a certain level of awareness and, in the
case of the budget and tax issues, coordination among the District’s elected officials – including
the members of the Council – to develop workable strategies 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.
(g) Beyond that, there is a legitimate expectation that circumstances like those described
in subsections (d) and (e) of this section will continue to arise in the foreseeable future 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.
(h) 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.
(i) This emergency legislation remains 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.
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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 2026 be adopted after a single reading.
Sec. 4. This resolution shall take effect immediately