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The union alleges President Stephanie Bulger tried to circumvent open-meetings law by holding small group sessions with the LCC board. She says the meetings were “strictly informational” about how the administration is approaching its work to trim the college’s budget.
The faculty union at Lane Community College has accused LCC President Stephanie Bulger of violating state open-meeting laws by holding small-group sessions with members of the college’s board of education.
The school’s administration is rejecting the charge, noting that none of the sessions between Bulger and the board members involved a quorum of board members and therefore would not be considered an official meeting under state law.
That’s the way that the Oregon Government Ethics Commission generally interprets the law. A commission spokesperson — while emphasizing that she could not speak to any specific case — told Lookout Eugene-Springfield that meetings without a quorum are not subject to the state’s open-meeting laws.
But some board members say they’re worried that these smaller gatherings could open the door for prohibited “serial communications” — cases in which a board deliberates on an issue through a series of communications between members or through an intermediary.
It’s another in a series of clashes between the LCC administration and the Lane Community College Education Association, the faculty union. The association, which is in the midst of contract negotiations, said the incident is an illustration of how the college’s administration is trying to wrest power away from the board.
Bulger, the union said in a press release, “needs to stop trying to seize control over the Board of Education’s agenda — and meetings — and act within her own scope.”
LCC officials deny the charge, saying the union’s allegations are “a misunderstanding of public meetings law.”
Meanwhile, the question of whether the LCC board should primarily focus on governance or become more involved in operational matters continues to divide the trustees — and seems likely to surface again at the board’s scheduled Nov. 5 meeting.
Email exchanges
At issue in the open-meeting controversy are smaller meetings held between the seven-member board of education and Bulger in late August and early September.
In an email to the board dated July 30 — one of a handful of emails released by the Lane Community College Education Association in its press release alleging the open-meeting violations — Bulger suggested a series of smaller sessions (with no more than two or three trustees per session, to avoid a four-trustee quorum). In the email, Bulger said she wanted to share information about how the administration is approaching its work to trim LCC’s budget.
Austin Fölnagy, the board chair, responded that day by email: “Respectfully, this decision appears to have been made without a prior meeting or consultation with board leadership, and it doesn’t align with established board processes, policies, best practices or principals of good governance.”
Later, the board’s vice-chair, Jerry Rust, sent a text message in which he expressed “great concern about violating the open meetings (law) by having serial briefings with different members of the board.”
In late August, Fölnagy filed a grievance over the matter with LCC and also filed a complaint with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission.
In the grievance, addressed to Bulger, Fölnagy wrote: “As I stated, although I know that as our President you have good intentions and that the intent of these meetings was purely informational, what I have witnessed falls under the scope of public meeting law. And the majority of the board was part of this deliberative process and intermediary acts have occurred.”
The Oregon Government Ethics Commission said it declined to open a preliminary review into the complaint, mostly because Fölnagy submitted the complaint against Bulger and not against the members of the board of education.
Fölnagy’s grievance triggered a response from Bulger, according to the emails the union received through a records request.
Bulger wrote that the meetings she held with board members “were strictly informational. They were intended to provide transparency regarding anticipated budget reductions and to provide Board members the opportunity to ask questions. At no point was a quorum present, and no deliberation or decision-making occurred.”
She added: “… I was not acting as an intermediary or taking information received from individual board members and sharing it with a quorum of the board.”
Bulger also added in her response to Fölnagy: “The way you have chosen to raise your concerns has created an unnecessary distraction from my responsibilities as President.” Spending “time and energy” to respond to his complaint, she said, “undermines the effectiveness of the presidency by making it more difficult for me to carry out the responsibilities entrusted to me by the Board.”
In its news release, the education association said Bulger’s response to Fölnagy was “belittling” and “scolding.”
“The exchange is concerning, given that it appears to show clear disdain from the LCC President for the independent authority of the publicly elected Board specifically tasked with regulation, oversight and governance over LCC,” the union’s press release said.
Fölnagy declined to specifically comment on the news release, saying that his comments in the emails released by the union spoke for themselves.
“My concern, as you can see from the emails, was strictly focused on upholding the integrity of the deliberative process, which is a core duty of the Board Chair,” Fölnagy wrote in an email to Lookout Eugene-Springfield. “My concern also, as seen in the emails, was also to actively prevent any scenario that could lead to the appearance or reality of prohibited serial communications among a majority of the Board.”
Jenna McCulley, LCC’s senior adviser for strategic communications, called Bulger’s response “a direct and informational email asking the board chair to allow her to successfully fulfill her duties as president. Dr. Bulger has articulated a desire to work cooperatively with all members of the board in support of successful college governance.”
Serial communications
Oregon administrative rules say “prohibited serial communications” take place when a governing body — outside of a public meeting — uses a series of written communications, in-person meetings or an intermediary to communicate among a quorum of members for the purpose of deliberating on or deciding a matter.
The issue was at the heart of a legal battle in the 2010s involving the Lane County Board of Commissioners — a case that Rust cited as a concern.
In 2012, a quorum of Lane County commissioners communicated via email and telephone regarding a public records request, but only two commissioners were talking directly at any one time, according to a summary of the case from the Local Government Law Group in Eugene. A lawsuit over the matter made its way to the Oregon Court of Appeals, which ruled that private serial communications among a quorum of a board’s members violate the open-meeting law, if deliberation or decision-making occur.
The case was appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court, which reversed the appeals court on other grounds. The high court did not rule on the issue of whether serial communications violate public meeting laws. Government bodies have been advised to act as if the appeals court’s decision on serial communications still stands.
Guidance from the Oregon Government Ethics Commission in July 2025 said that, in order for prohibited serial communications to occur, they must:
- Involve a quorum of the governing body.
- Involve a matter within the governing body’s jurisdiction.
- Use the serial communication to deliberate or make a decision.
LCC officials say none of those conditions was met in the meetings between Bulger and board members. All the board members except Rust (who was visiting family in China at the time) attended one of the meeting, but no more than two attended any single meeting.
“No deliberations occurred at the meetings or between meetings,” McCulley said in an email.
