By Staff Reporter |

Attorney General Kris Mayes is declining to investigate Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) for potential violations of open meeting law due to a potential conflict of interest.

Mayes referred the complaint, filed back in April, to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO).

The complaint accused SUSD Superintendent Scott Menzel of violating open meeting law concerning school closures and consolidations, specifically with regard to the operations of the Phase II Design Advisory Team tasked with handling those decisions. The governing board voted to close Pima Elementary School and Echo Canyon School last December. 

According to the complaint, the district’s Phase II Design Advisory Team must be open to the public because it was formed at the direction of the board, not the superintendent. The design advisory team operates under the classification of a Superintendent Advisory Committee, which is exempt from Open Meeting Law requirements.

The Phase II Design Advisory team publicizes its past and upcoming meeting dates and materials but does not permit the public to attend the meetings. The team held five meetings as part of Phase A, which lasted from March through May, and recently concluded five meetings as part of Phase B, which lasted from June through earlier this month. 

Menzel proposed the design advisory team during a regular governing board meeting last November, and the following month the board discussed the formation of the design advisory team in a regular meeting. The board didn’t vote at that latter meeting to form the design advisory team. 

The citizen who filed the complaint told AZ Free News that MCAO informed him in late July that the attorney general’s office had referred the investigation to them. Caitlyn Mitchell, an attorney with the Civil Services Division, told the complainant that the attorney general could not investigate because it provides legal counsel to SUSD. 

“The Arizona Attorney General’s Office referred your Open Meeting Law complaint against the Scottsdale Unified School District to us to avoid any potential conflict of interest because the AG’s Office also provides legal counsel to SUSD,” said Mitchell. 

Around the time of our initial reporting, SUSD advised AZ Free News that their officials were not aware of the complaint filed against the district, nearly a month after the complaint had been filed. 

AZ Free News asked the MCAO when the attorney general referred the complaint to their office, and when they might have the results of their investigation complete.

We also asked about communications with SUSD, given the lack of awareness the district initially had when the complaint was in the possession of the attorney general’s office. 

MCAO didn’t respond to our inquiries. 

Last summer, the attorney general’s office found SUSD in violation of open meeting law for engaging in actions similar to those that led to the creation of the Phase II Design Advisory Team. 

“The Open Meeting Law does not permit a governing board to evade the public meeting requirements by ‘informally’ forming or establishing, or by directing a superintendent to establish, a committee to perform work that would otherwise need to be conducted in public,” stated Mayes. “[W]e caution against an overly narrow reading of the law focused exclusively on the circumstances of a committee’s creation.”

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