The Open Meetings Act is specific about minutes twice over: what they must contain, and when the public must be able to see them. Here is both, as a checklist a clerk can run after every meeting.
The Open Meetings Act gives the public a right to see minutes on a schedule, and both deadlines land on the clerk. Proposed minutes, the draft that has not yet been approved by the body, must be available for public inspection within 8 business days after the meeting. Once the body approves them, the approved minutes must be available within 5 business days after the approval meeting (MCL 15.269(3)).
The 8-day clock is the one that bites, because it runs while everything else from the meeting is also on your desk. A board that meets the second Tuesday of the month gives its clerk until roughly the following Friday week, holidays permitting, to have a public-ready draft. Offices that write minutes the week before the next meeting, a common habit, are routinely weeks past the statutory availability date without anyone noticing until someone asks.
Run this list against every set of minutes before they go out (MCL 15.269(1)):
What the statute does not require: verbatim discussion, speaker-by-speaker debate, or characterizations of anyone’s tone. Minutes are a record of decisions, not a screenplay. A one-or-two-sentence summary of substantive discussion per item serves the public record; the template in our minutes guide shows the structure.
Closed sessions get their own custody rules. The clerk takes a separate set of minutes for the closed portion, and those minutes are retained by the clerk and are not available to the public. They can be disclosed only by court order in specified actions, and they may be destroyed 1 year and 1 day after the body approves the minutes of the regular meeting at which the closed session was approved (MCL 15.267(2)). Practical translation: keep them physically and digitally apart from the open minutes, label them, and calendar the destruction date rather than guessing at it later. The open minutes still record that the closed session happened, its purpose, and the authorizing roll-call vote.
Minutes are where OMA enforcement starts. A decision made in a meeting that violated the Act can be invalidated in circuit court where the noncompliance impaired the rights of the public, and the standard challenge window runs 60 days from when the approved minutes are made public (30 days for certain financial decisions) (MCL 15.270). Late or incomplete minutes stretch that exposure. An intentional violation is a misdemeanor with fines up to $1,000, rising for repeat offenses (MCL 15.272), and officials carry personal civil liability up to $500 for intentional violations (MCL 15.273). None of that is likely on any given Tuesday. All of it starts with whether the minutes were right and on time.
Dekree drafts the minutes from your meeting audio: record on a phone, upload the file, and the draft comes back with attendance, motions, votes, and roll calls structured the way MCL 15.269(1) expects. The 8-day and 5-day clocks are tracked on the meeting itself, and nothing publishes to your portal until the clerk reviews and approves.
Two clocks under MCL 15.269(3): proposed minutes must be available for public inspection within 8 business days after the meeting, and approved minutes within 5 business days after the meeting at which they are approved.
Under MCL 15.269(1): the date, time, and place of the meeting; members present and members absent; all decisions made at a meeting open to the public; the purpose or purposes for which a closed session is held; and all roll-call votes.
No. The statute requires decisions and the listed facts, not dialogue. A faithful summary of discussion is good practice; verbatim debate is not required and usually makes minutes worse as a public record.
The clerk takes a separate set of minutes for any closed session, retains them personally, and they are not available to the public. They can only be disclosed by court order in specified actions, and they may be destroyed 1 year and 1 day after approval of the minutes of the regular meeting at which the closed session was approved (MCL 15.267(2)).
This article is educational information for Michigan public bodies, current as of the publication date. It is not legal advice, and statutes and court decisions change. Confirm specifics with your municipal attorney. Statute text: legislature.mi.gov.