LIHU'E, Kaua'i — Circuit Court Judge George Masuoka has ruled that decisions by the state Office of Information Practices can be appealed to the courts.

The case involves a dispute between the OIP and the Kaua'i County Council over whether the county can keep secret the minutes of a Jan. 20 closed session on a proposal to investigate the Kaua'i Police Department.

At the request of several residents, the OIP reviewed meeting minutes and concluded the discussions did not qualify for secrecy under the state's open-meeting law. The OIP ordered the minutes made public.

County Attorney Lani Nakazawa said the council was conferring with legal staff about the investigation, and that the entire contents of the discussion fall under the attorney-client privilege. The county asked the court to prevent the OIP from enforcing its order.

OIP director Leslie Kondo argued the courts do not have jurisdiction in OIP matters, but the county countered that this created the unusual situation in which there is no oversight of the agency's decisions.

"Nobody has ever challenged them before," said David J. Minklin, attorney for the county.

While not ruling on the merit of the OIP's order to release the meeting minutes, Masuoka did open the door last week for a court appeal of the order by the county. A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 11.

In a related case, Kaua'i Police Commission chairman Michael Ching sued to gain access to the same meeting minutes. The fate of the lawsuit likely will be determined by the court's decision in the county's case against the OIP.

Meanwhile, Kaua'i residents Walter Lewis and Raymond Chuan have demanded access to the minutes of other closed sessions. Chuan said the two want to study why there were more than three times as many closed sessions in the first two years of current council chairman Kaipo Asing's term as during the last two years of past chairman Ron Kouchi's term.

The county has offered to let Chuan and Lewis see those parts of the files that it doesn't feel need to be edited out, but only after they pay $2,800 to cover the staff time used to do the editing. Chuan said they have not paid the fee, in part because they don't know what they'd be getting.

"We still don't have a precise knowledge of what it is they want us to spend $2,800 for," Chuan said.

The OIP has said that in the absence of a valid reason to keep them secret, the minutes of those meetings must be made public.