Sunshine Week 2026 — Government agencies invite public to participate in meetings
SHERIDAN — While some government meetings are not required to be open to the public, Sheridan County agencies encourage public participation in government dealings.
“Overall, open meetings are designed to ensure that final decisions aren’t being made in secret,” Sheridan County Administrative Director Cameron Duff wrote in an email to The Sheridan Press.
Governments are required by Wyoming Statute to conduct open meetings.
“The agencies of Wyoming exist to conduct public business. Certain deliberations and actions shall be taken openly as provided in this act,” Wyoming Statute 16-4-401 states.
“All meetings of the governing body of an agency are public meetings, open to the public at all times, except as otherwise provided. No action of a governing body of an agency shall be taken except during a public meeting following notice of the meeting in accordance with this act,” the law continues. “Action taken at a meeting not in conformity with this act is null and void and not merely voidable.”
Per Wyoming statute, municipal governing bodies, county commissions and school district boards of trustees must reach a quorum, defined as a majority of the members being present, to conduct official business.
Municipal governing bodies, county commissions and school districts can create boards or sub-committees to guide their work. In Sheridan County, they often do not include a quorum of a given entity’s governing body, and are therefore not required to hold open, public meetings. Those boards and commissions focus on various content areas, including budgeting or policy recommendations. They often include elected officials and staff, and sometimes include members of the public.
While statute does not require those committee and board meetings to be open to the public, The Sheridan Press sought to discover all committees in operation by the city, county and school and college districts in Sheridan County to bring light to meetings in which publicly elected officials participate regularly.
City and county governments
The city of Sheridan has 15 boards or commissions listed on its website. The mayor of Sheridan appoints city representatives to each one, and many are collaborative with other government agencies; Sheridan City Council then approves the appointments during a regular meeting at the beginning of a calendar year.
Sheridan County has 19 boards and commissions with appointments made and approved by the Sheridan County Board of County Commissioners.
Boards and commissions often include staff, elected officials and members of the public.
Two city of Sheridan or Sheridan County committees — the county’s finance committee and the city’s employee relations committee — with elected appointees were called out as being closed to the public.
The county’s finance committee was created to review audit results and recommend audit service proposals for approval by the Sheridan County Board of County Commissioners. Three elected officials — Commissioner Christi Haswell, Treasurer Katie Araas and Clerk Eda Schunk Thompson — served on the committee.
Commissioners approved bids for professional financial and compliance audit and audit preparation services during their regular meeting Tuesday.
One city council member is appointed to the city’s employee relations committee. City Clerk Ashlee Foster described the committee as an opportunity for staff to hear from peers about happenings across city operations.
“It allows for communication between staff, administration and Council and is not intended for public involvement,” Foster wrote in an email.
Conversations during the committee meetings can include personnel matters, city processes, staff events and other topics more suitable to be handled internally, Foster added.
Therefore, employee relations committee meetings are not open to the public; the lone council member appointed to the employee relations committee listens and supports as needed during the meetings and does not make or solicit decisions.
Otherwise, meetings with elected county or city officials are often open to the public.
For the city, meetings are opened when a board or commission is making decisions or recommendations that impact members of the public.
“In those cases, meetings are open to provide transparency and allow for public involvement where appropriate,” Foster wrote. She added transparency is important so those impacted can stay informed and get involved.
For the county, most other committees help make recommendations to a county department, component unit or the commissioners.
“It is our goal to publish the agendas for those committee meetings for transparency purposes and to see if anyone has interest in attending,” Duff wrote in an email to The Sheridan Press.
The Sheridan Press publishes agendas for the following government meetings in its Saturday editions and at thesheridanpress.com.
Open meetings, Duff added, allow Sheridanites to see decisions as they are made and allow an opportunity for public input on any topics they may support or be concerned about.
“There have been many instances of agenda items having no comments from the public going into the meeting, but then residents show up to voice a concern,” Duff wrote.
Those voices can result in the committees tabling an agenda item to review comments and gain additional insight.
Numerous Sheridan County Planning & Zoning Commission meetings in 2023 and 2024 about potentially creating an Acme Special Planning Area stalled after significant public scrutiny of the proposal and ultimately led to the planning and zoning commission issuing a negative recommendation on the formation of the special planning area in late 2024.
College
According to board policy 8000 — Responsibility for operating the district — the president of the board may appoint temporary committees, composed of less than the full membership for special purposes. Each committee shall be discharged upon the completion of its assignment.
As of March 9, the Northern Wyoming Community College District has two temporary committees, which include a policy and procedure review committee and a Gillette Community College District workgroup.
The temporary policy and procedure review committee includes Sheridan College President Walt Tribley, NWCCD trustee Gary Reynolds and board Vice Chair Elaine Henry. The committee meets as needed.
Sheridan College Vice President of Community Engagement and Strategic Communication and Public Information Officer for the Northern Wyoming Community College District Wendy Smith said both committees are not open to the public.
“They don’t need to be. It’s not an official meeting of the board. There’s no quorum. If there’s any policies or procedure changes coming to the board, that group meets just to review them before they go on the agenda,” Smith said. “The opportunity for the public to interact with that information would be during the meeting, when it’s agendized and advertised.”
The GCCD workgroup includes Walt Tribley, NWCCD trustee Chuck Holloway and board secretary Ward Cotton. The group has not met for more than a year, but meeting locations rotated between Gillette and Sheridan.
Additionally, members of the NWCCD board also serve on the Wyoming Association of Community College Trustees, Board of Cooperative Higher Education Services and the Sheridan Economic and Education Development Authority, which are all open and regularly noticed to the public.
The Wyoming Association of Community College Trustees requires two trustees be appointed from the NWCCD board, which include Chair Tracy Swanson and Henry. Meetings are quarterly and move through the state of Wyoming at various community college locations.
SEEDA requires two appointees to represent Sheridan College and they do not have to be trustees. Sheridan College representatives include Tribley and trustee Tom Ringley.
Three trustees are required to be appointed from the NWCCD board to BOCHES, which include Cotton, Treasurer Bob Leibrich and Holloway.
K-12
Sheridan County School District 2 has a total of 10 committees that board members have been appointed to. Each committee typically meets four times per year or are scheduled as needed. The dates are not set in advance. The board policy committee meets the week prior to each regularly scheduled board meeting.
According to board policy BDE — Board committees — states the board, upon a motion that is passed, may create advisory committees as necessary to assist the board of trustees. The function of committees is advisory only. No committee will have the power to assume or exercise responsibilities that are properly within the realm of administrative employees or other employees within the district.
Policy BDE also notes the number of board members serving on any committee shall always be less than a majority of the number of members of the SCSD2 board, which means the meetings do not have to be noticed or open to the public, per statute.
The board chair has the power to appoint members of the board to serve on such committees and he or she deems necessary and appropriate. Committee members are appointed annually and the chair may appoint a board member to fill an unexpired term of any committee person who is unable to serve, according to the policy.
SCSD2 Board Chair Shane Rader said the biggest benefit to having board members appointed to committees is being able to spread the work among the board in an organized fashion. It allows the board to dig into different areas, Rader said.
Rader noted that other staff in committees vary depending on the committee. Some committees are made up of staff at different levels in their building, while others are more specialized such as SCSD2 Business Manager Brandon Finney being a part of the budget committee.
Rader said that he can’t think of any discussion in committee meetings that wouldn’t be suitable for the public and noted that all committee work generally runs through the board for approval.
“That’s always the expectation that’s set with committees. It’s not these committee members making the decision, they’re just doing additional leg work for the rest of the board to be able to present a recommendation,” Rader said.
When asked if the SCSD2 board would ever consider providing notice to committee meetings and opening the meetings for the public to attend, Rader said, “I don’t know.”
SCSD3 has a total of five committees, with four committees including board members. SCSD3 Superintendent Chase Christensen said most of the time the board has its own committees that are put together to get more voices in the room to help them accomplish their work.
SCSD3 in the past has had an ad hoc committee — a temporary group formed to address a specific task or issue — and as soon as a decision is made, the committee disperses.
Christensen said the board hasn’t necessarily closed the committee meetings to the public and noted that they aren’t a meeting of the board. Membership of the board is below the threshold that would meet a quorum and the board is able to gather information.
According to board policy 8350 — Public meetings — a quorum is three members of the SCSD3 board.
“They send two members out that can help with gathering information in a little bit more effective fashion that you can’t really just sit down and talk about. You’ve got to be out there doing the work in order to get what you need,” Christensen said.
Christensen said he doesn’t believe there is any discussion that would not be suitable for the public.
“I think the vast majority of the work the board does is made to be done in the open air. A rental walk through, I would not open to the public because I don’t necessarily think it appropriate for a random member of the public to be walking through somebody’s house. We’re serving as a landlord in that instance, we’re not serving as a public entity that is open in all the affairs that they conduct,” Christensen said. “Policy committees, salary and relations, those types of things, if I had a request from somebody who said, ‘Hey, I want to sit in on the meeting,’ I’d probably make it happen for them.”
While SCSD3 does not provide an official notice of the committee meeting in The Sheridan Press, Christensen noted the board does schedule the committee meetings during its open board meeting.
“While it’s not publishing the paper type notice, I think we do provide adequate notice to the public because we set those meetings during the open session of a board meeting,” Christensen said.
The Sheridan Press submitted a records request to SCSD1 Feb. 16 to seek a complete list of all SCSD1 committees, meeting frequency, time and location of all meetings. SCSD1 later responded on Feb. 16, but The Sheridan Press did not receive the information by press time.
Those interested in further engaging with government agencies, should read The Sheridan Press Saturday editions and online at thesheridanpress.com to review agendas for upcoming meetings. Those interested in engaging further in committee meetings should reach out to their public officials, listed weekly in The Sheridan Press and on government websites.
This story was published on March 21, 2026.