In what might be a first-of-its-kind case, a circuit court judge has ruled that 20 Polk County Board supervisors violated Wisconsin’s Open Meeting Law while working out a sale agreement for the county-owned Golden Age Manor nursing home in Amery.

In a written opinion dated Dec. 26, Judge Eugene Harrington indicated that the matter will be scheduled for further proceedings to determine and impose penalties against the defendants.

Balsam Lake area resident Jim Drabek, who filed an open meeting law complaint against the supervisors last April, and then acted as a citizen prosecutor, said the Amery attorney who successfully handled another Golden Age Manor case, Jason Whitley, told him he [Drabek] appears to be the first layperson to win such an open meeting law case.

Drabek likens his success to bashing a homerun his first time at bat in the big leagues.

Drabek believes members of the county board’s Finance Committee maliciously violated the Open Meeting Law because they were angry about a story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press that trumpeted the fact that the Finance Committee members had been found guilty of failing to properly give notice for an agenda item.

“That came out on the 17th of November [2007],” Drabek notes. “The 21st of November, the first meeting [of the Finance Committee], (they) went to closed session.”

Drabek argued in legal filings that Finance Committee members Neil Johnson, Mick Larsen, Gary Bergstrom, Duana Bremer and Larry Jepsen continually violated the Open Meeting Law in meetings held between Dec. 26, 2007 and Jan. 23, 2008 by going into closed session for “competitive and bargaining reasons” after the committee had agreed to sell Golden Age Manor to Rice Partnerships, of Appleton, Wis., for $2.5 million.

In one of its briefs, Polk County argued, as Harrington paraphrased, that the identity of the buyer needed to remain confidential until a sale agreement was finalized by the full county board because “the Finance Committee was concerned from the outset that if they released the name of any potential buyers that the buyers could walk away from the deal if they were harassed by the group who was opposing the sale.”

Harrington rejected that rationale in his opinion, saying it “does not comport” with the narrow exceptions to the Open Meeting Law.

“Merely because a government decision is contentious does not warrant a closed meeting,” Harrington wrote. “Contentious decisions of a public body ought to have more public discourse, not less. The people impacted by these decisions — patients, employees, taxpayers — have a right to express their view openly. Likewise, policy makers have an obligation to decide openly and publicly such that the public not only is aware of the policy, but also can express its collective displeasure at the polls.” [Editor’s Note: Punctuation was changed to add clarity.]

Drabek charged that Finance Committee members and other supervisors violated the Open Meeting Law a total of 83 times.

Drabek’s original complaint lists the five Finance Committee members as class 1 defendants and 18 other supervisors as class 2 defendants for considering the Golden Age Manor sale agreement in closed session at a special Jan. 22, 2008 county board meeting.

Charges against three supervisors — Bob Blake, Jeff Peterson and Russell Arcand — were dismissed a couple of months ago because they were not served with a complaint and summons in a legally proper fashion. Drabek personally handed a summons to Peterson and Arcand, and a plaintiff is not allowed to do so. After failing in attempts to serve Blake at his home, in the Town of Clam Falls, Drabek and a friend served the papers on his wife, who works in a county government office in the Polk County Government Center. It is not proper to serve someone at a work site rather than at that person’s home, however.

Drabek wants Harrington to impose the maximum fine of $300 for each violation of the Open Meeting Law.

In addition, he is asking for $140,000 in reasonable attorney fees for his time and effort — $105,000 from the group 1 defendants and $35,000 from the group 2 defendants.

He is asking for triple damages against the group 1 defendants because of what he considers to be “the malicious intent” with which they violated the law.

One example of that, Drabek says, is how Larry Jepsen stated in a deposition that the Finance Committee did not go into closed session at its Jan. 23, 2008 meeting even though the official minutes of that meeting indicate there was a closed session and that the four committee members present all voted to go into closed session. A brief filed by Polk County’s attorneys has a blank space where that vote should have been printed.

Drabek says he wants triple damages “to send a message to all governmental bodies that knowingly, intentionally and maliciously violating the open meeting law will not be tolerated in the state of Wisconsin.”

Drabek, whose wife is a registered nurse who works at Golden Age Manor, also is asking for the court to order the supervisors to make a public apology to all citizens of Polk County by publishing such an apology in three different local newspapers on two separate dates.

“I want it all,” said Drabek, who is not inclined to agree to any sort of compromise at this point. “I think this is just horrendous. ... What if your mother lived at Golden Age Manor, if she was a resident there? Wouldn’t you want to know who’s going to take care of her? I think this is just horrendous.”

In September a Wisconsin appeals court voided the Golden Age Manor sale agreement between Polk County and Rice Partnerships. The state supreme court declined to review that decision.