The Sun-Herald vs. Gulfport city council, Mayor Warr
The city said Friday in an e-mail dispatch called “The Warr Report” that the administration did nothing wrong in allowing the City Council to discuss “a friendly annexation” behind closed doors.
The e-mail was sent in response to a Sun Herald article on Friday about the meeting. As the article pointed out, the public can be legitimately excluded from meetings about “proposed litigation,” including annexation.
But Mayor Brent Warr, the city attorney and the council president also said agreements between the city and a developer whose property is within the proposed annexed area came up during the meeting. Gulfport attorney Henry Laird, an expert on the state’s Open Meetings laws, said any discussion of those agreements in an executive session would have been illegal.
Sun-Herald
6/6/9
Magnolia Tribune
