A committee devising a plan for COVID-19 vaccinations in North Dakota met publicly for the first time Wednesday, discussing various scenarios regarding the distribution of a future coronavirus vaccine.
Three meetings of the vaccination planning committee and an unknown number of subcommittee meetings were held in September without public notice, which North Dakota Newspaper Association attorney Jack McDonald contends violated the state's open meetings law.
The Wednesday meeting was the first of which the public was notified via the secretary of state’s public notices website. The Tribune requested and received minutes of the previous meetings.
Committee Facilitator Molly Howell, the state Department of Health's immunization program manager, told the group at the beginning of Wednesday's meeting that the public and media outlets might be listening in, but “I don’t want that to deter your participation in the planning process.”
“I want to start off with mentioning, due to the high number of external stakeholders that we’ve started including in our COVID vaccination planning process, we’ve determined after consulting legal counsel that the COVID vaccination planning committee meeting should be an open meeting,” Howell said. “We do feel like this should be a transparent process so the public feels comfortable.”
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