When debating possible farming rules specifically regarding concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), central Missouri’s Cooper County health board faces a lawsuit for knowingly violating the open meetings, “Sunshine Law.”
Closed meetings, beginning in 2018, failed to be properly detailed to county residents about the subject matter discussed in the meeting and why they were deemed “closed session” material.
Spurred by a Minnesota-based Pipestone farm proposal that would bring a new facility to southern Cooper County, the health board held a series of meetings to draft rules limiting how much manure farmers could use on their property that came from the CAFO, a local news source explains.
“The law gives elected officials in general and agency bureaucrats a lot of latitude in a lot of different contexts to make rules that can significantly affect your life,” says Brent Haden, an attorney for the local farmers told the news source. “At the very least, if they’re going to do that, then they should expose to the light of day what they’re doing, the reasons they’re doing it, the why and the how of what they’re doing.”
Last week, a jury found the board had violated the open meetings law five separate times and could face as much as a $1,000 per violation. Additionally, the lawsuit challenges the rules the county placed on the CAFO operation.
Cooper County also sued the state of Missouri in a separate lawsuit over laws outlawing counties from enacting stringent health rules on agriculture, the news article reports. The lawsuit is set to appear in front of the Supreme Court of Missouri on Sept. 20.
