Topeka ? Atty. Gen. Phill Kline acknowledged regret Thursday about private meetings with Board of Education members, but he continued to defend them as legal and said such gatherings were common in state government.

Kline met last month with the six conservative Republicans who form a majority on the 10-member board, in two sessions with three board members each. The Republican attorney general has faced strong criticism and noted a recent editorial saying the meetings showed a lack of judgment.

“Yeah, OK, you know, I’ll take that shot,” Kline told reporters and editors during a session of the annual Day at the Legislature program sponsored by AP and the Kansas Press Assn. “In hindsight, I wouldn’t have done this.”

Kline also jokingly referred to one topic of the meetings, his offer to board members to defend them in court if they mandated stickers in science textbooks saying evolution is a theory, not a fact. The board hasn’t pursued the idea, and Kline said it wasn’t his — just an issue people had raised with him.

“And believe me, I wouldn’t have said ‘stickers.'” Kline said. “I would never have used the word. I’m still kicking myself over that. I can see my re-election and spending $150,000 talking about stupid stickers.”

But Kline was serious — and spirited — in telling the reporters and editors that he hadn’t violated the Kansas Open Meetings Act.

“It really is difficult to get editorials against you saying I violated the law when clearly I’m not subject to the law in this instance,” Kline said. “You can criticize me for judgment, but, folks, when you say somebody violated the law, you ought to know what you’re talking about.”

But Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, called Kline’s comments a “diatribe.”

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“I am rather taken aback when he stands here and says those kinds of meetings occur all the time,” Hensley said. “I don’t believe that for a minute.”

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.