IHL confirms no vote on Jones' contract in Friday meeting

If the state College Board eventually votes to renew Ole Miss chancellor Dan Jones' contract, it will require another meeting.

Members took no action Friday in a two-hour executive session that addressed the issue, a state College Board spokeswoman confirmed Monday. After Friday's meeting, neither board members nor College Board Commissioner Jim Borsig would say whether there was a vote.

Borsig would only confirm that negotiations to renew Jones' contract would continue.

"We're in discussions, but those won't take place in the media," Borsig said. "Chancellor Jones and I are in agreement on this."

Though it likely softened another wave of conjecture surrounding Jones' future at Ole Miss, the College Board would not have had to immediately reveal a vote even if one had been taken.

State laws governing open meetings do not explicitly require public bodies to immediately disclose action, or lack thereof, taken in executive session. The Mississippi Supreme Court has not answered the question, but two attorney general opinions the last 30 years have: Each says that public bodies do not have to reveal what happened in executive session until the meeting minutes are published. Those minutes must be made available within 30 days of the meeting's adjournment.

At IHL, minutes from the previous meeting are included in the agenda for the next one. Minutes for Friday's meeting will not be available until the afternoon of April 15, one day before the next regularly scheduled meeting.

Although the law has no specific requirement that information be made available immediately, nothing prohibits it, either. A 1982 opinion from then-Mississippi Attorney General Bill Allain said members of a public body could share an executive session's contents "informally," though the minutes were still considered the official record. A 2004 opinion from Attorney General Jim Hood affirmed that.

The College Board voted March 20 to direct Jones to begin preparations to search for his successor, essentially not renewing his contract, which expires in September.

Negotiations to extend Jones' contract started after criticism of the original decision mounted.

Contact Clay Chandler at (601) 961-7264 or cchandler@gannett.com. Follow @claychand on Twitter.