Topeka ? Questioned by legislators Wednesday, Attorney General Phill Kline continued to defend private meetings he had with State Board of Education members, saying they didn’t violate the Kansas Open Meetings Act.

An attorney for the board took the same position in a letter Wednesday replying to a demand from The Associated Press and five newspapers for more information about the two gatherings, which occurred last week.

Paul Stevens, AP’s central region vice president, said, “We’re disappointed the board didn’t recognize that its conduct was wrong. Discussions of public business should always take place in the open.”

In the gatherings, each with three board members participating, Kline met with the six conservative Republicans who form a majority on the 10-member board. Kline has said he discussed education funding and offered to defend in court a policy of putting stickers in science textbooks saying evolution is a theory, not fact, should the board want to pursue it.

Kline discussed the gatherings during a meeting Wednesday of the Senate Elections and Local Government Committee. He reiterated his position that the meetings were legal because he didn’t transmit information between the two groups.

“The reality is, it is not a violation,” Kline said during an interview afterward. “I didn’t violate the spirit of the law.”

The Open Meetings Act requires public boards to notify the public when a majority of a quorum plans to meet and to hold their discussions in public. For the Board of Education, a majority of a quorum is four members.

In 1998, Kline’s predecessor, Carla Stovall, said in a legal opinion that “serial” meetings among smaller numbers would constitute a gathering of a majority of a quorum if they involved a common topic. The news organizations contend Kline’s two meetings fit that description.

In a letter last week to the board, Mike Merriam, a Topeka attorney representing the news organizations, asked it to acknowledge the meetings were illegal, promise it would not violate the Kansas Open Meetings Act again and embrace open government.

In a separate letter to Kline, Merriam asked the attorney general to explain why he wanted secrete discussions with board members.

Besides AP, Merriam sent the letters for The Hutchinson News, Kansas City Star, Lawrence Journal World, Salina Journal and Topeka Capital-Journal.

In the board’s reply, attorney Dan Biles cited another 1998 opinion in which Stovall said serial meetings occur when gatherings are held to exchange members’ views and are conducted at members’ behest. He said Kline’s office initiated the gatherings and both lasted less than 15 minutes.

“I see nothing constituting a ‘meeting’ as that term is specifically described in our existing law,” Biles said, adding that Kline and board members later discussed the gatherings publicly.

But Pete Goering, the Topeka newspaper’s executive editor, said the board’s explanation is baffling.

“I’m disappointed that a group that should know better would conduct business in a manner that most people would consider, if not illegal, at least suspicious,” he said.

However, Senate committee Chairman Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, was satisfied with Kline’s explanation.

Sen. Donald Betts, D-Wichita, said the committee needs to look for ways to prevent such meetings when it considers open meetings legislation.

But he added about Kline, “He answered his questions well enough to convince me there was no violation of the Open Meetings Act.”