Guide to Executive Session

Principles to Guide the Practice of Executive Session

The principles, and associated practices, that follow provide a framework for conducting executive session. The aims are to establish a broadly shared set of expectations for how executive sessions are conducted, and to promote consistency in the implementation of executive sessions across Senate committees.  As outlined in the Guide to Committee Membership, executive sessions are held for the purposes of discussing and acting upon sensitive or confidential information.  This purpose, however, must be understood in light of the expectation that committee deliberations conducted in open session are themselves confidential. All meeting participants must feel free to offer their respective perspectives, without concern that their comments will be reported beyond the discussion, so that a committee’s final position on an issue is as informed as possible.  

Principles & Practices  

1. Executive session is conducted in keeping with the Senate’s Guide to Committee Membership.

Practice: 

• Executive sessions are for voting members; ex-officio members, students, and consultants maybe invited to participate by the committee and/or chair.  
• Executive sessions are indicated on the committee’s meeting agenda for that day.
• Executive sessions are normally included on every agenda, although they may or may not be used.
• Decisions made in executive session are generally noted in the publicly available minutes of the meeting in which the session was held, although minutes are not recorded for the executive session.
• Movement into and out of executive session is recorded in the minutes of the meeting in which the executive session was held.
   

2. When routine committee business is considered in executive session,¹ committees duly consider including non-voting members and consultants so as to promote the most informed decision.

Practice:

• Committees explicitly evaluate and define the set of non-voting members and consultants to involve in discussions of routine business conducted during executive session, taking into consideration the value of their contributions and the benefits of the shared understandings that result from participation.
   

3. Generally, actions taken in executive session are publicly communicated in more than one mode.

           Practice:
 

• The chair orally reports the decision in a subsequent chair’s report.
• The analyst provides the decision to all committee members and consultants in a summary of the meeting’s action items.
• The decision is noted in the publicly available minutes of the meeting in which the executive session is held.
• The decision and supporting reasoning are provided in related memoranda.
   

4. Generally, documents considered in executive session are considered sensitive, and are unavailable to the full committee membership, unless determined otherwise by the committee chair.

          Practice:
 

• The committee chair evaluates the confidential nature of executive session materials on a case-by-case basis.
• When reporting a decision made in executive session, the chair will report whether the materials are available to the full membership.
   

5. Executive sessions are not recorded² unless recording is approved by the chair.

Practice:

• The chair, in consultation with the analyst, will determine whether the discussion will be recorded.
• Routine business can be recorded for the purposes of drafting associated correspondence.
   

6. Committee members and consultants may request information or clarification regarding the matter of executive sessions. Committees are under no obligation to provide information beyond that communicated by the chair in open session (see #3 above).

Practice:
 

• Requests are made in writing to the committee chair with a copy to the analyst.