Jenna Fisher at Newton Patch has just posted a story about the anonymous open meeting law complaint against 11 female Newton City Councilors, including this explanation from Councilor Maria Greenberg
“The purpose of the get together was just to speak about the appropriateness of the way women were being treated [in the Chamber],” said Councilor Maria Scibelli Greenberg. “We didn’t know what the protocol was there. We wanted to get together with the experienced councilors and ask them how we could handle it in the future.”
She described the event as social gathering to vent and commiserate. “I guess you could characterize it as a mini support group session for the new councilors,” she told Patch.
Fisher also reports that City Clerk David Olson said Councilor Brenda Noel..
.. asked him if some of the female Councilors could get together at her house. Olson told Patch he said he advised that as long as they were not talking about anything that was before the Council, it should not be a problem.
UPDATE:
Julie Cohen at the TAB has also just posted a story exploring the nature of the complaint as it applies to Crescent Street and adding this…
According to the state’s Open Meeting Law regulations, a public body need not, and the Attorney General will not, investigate or address anonymous complaints.
Maria, can you elaborate? What type of mistreatment exactly? And who was the one female Councilor who did not partake?
Councilor Greenberg simply does not make a convincing case regarding meeting decorum. Perhaps she could state some examples of the grievances. If no minutes were taken could someone from the meeting write up a list of issues spoken about on May 20.
For those who may be wondering about decorum, all council and committee meetings are taped. One can listen…and judge for him/herself. Colleen…it is easy!
Congratulations to the women of the council!
I’m sympathetic if they were being treated poorly in the Chamber. But I’m wondering if/how her explanation pertains to Crescent Street?
@collen Councilor Greenberg is very wet behind the ears….not much that she says sounds convincing. But back to your commment, I agree with you. I need facts not fiction!
When 11 of our 12 female councilors get together because they don’t feel comfortable with the tenor of city council meetings, we have a serious problem.
I’m not at all worried about the open meeting law. Clearly the group sought legal advice about what they could and could not say according to the City Clerk and there are no allegations I’m aware of that they discussed anything they weren’t allowed to discuss.
However, there are several aspects of this complaint that I find highly problematic. Those include:
– The assumption that if the female councilors decided to meet together separate from the rest of the body, there must be some ulterior motive
– The assumption that if 10 of 12 women voted for a particular policy, they must have voted “as a block”, which is how it’s referenced in the complaint
– The reason for this gathering in the first place, that some women feel they’re being treated inappropriately on the council
If there’s an investigation of anything, it should be of what exactly is being said to women on the council that makes them so uncomfortable that they feel the need to seek out help.
Bryan,
Replace the words male/female with black/white and you can how the optics dont look good at all. Rules must be equally enforced and investigated…
I am going to come out of retirement to call BS on this complaint. There was absolutely no allegation that the female councilors discussed anything that was pending in the City Council, and they did not even have a quorum of the Council. Nothing to see here.
@Bugek – So far at least, no one has shown any evidence that any rules were broken. The fact that they checked in with David Olson to confirm that they were allowed to meet sounds like they were being scrupulous about the rules.
What struck me about the complaint was that the complainant lists 8 items of business that they imply were discussed aside from the “decorum” issues but doesn’t provide even a shred of evidence that they were.
The final recommended action of the complainant is breathtaking – the previous Crescent St vote is nullified and re-voted and those 11 women forfeit their right to vote on it, despite the fact that no one has presented any evidence that their meeting ever touched on that topic. Sure sounds like some serious sour grapes of someone on the losing side of a vote.
Also the “No male Councilors were invited to the meeting” had a distinctly Middle School ring to it 😉
@Ted Hess-Mahan — Thanks for lending some sane analysis to this story. Brenda Noel received pre-clearance from the city clerk, under clearly understood conditions. Eleven elected city councilwomen were at the meeting, including at least one who was other side of the Crescent St. fight, and yet none have come forward to say anything untoward happened. The complaint itself reads like an empty conspiracy theory.
Bugek, we have no reason to suspect that any rules were violated. The anonymously filed complaint sheds no light on anything other that the complainant’s desire to get the Crescent Street Plan back into the budget and blame it on a bunch of women.
The big story to me is not the complaint but whatever it is that spurred the meeting. I hope the group goes public with the story. I suspect it’s a more focused problem than general “appropriateness in the chamber”. What exactly do female councilors have to “handle”? I think it’s unfair of councilor Greenberg to leave the public in the dark like this.
So, I know some people here are ardent followers of city council meetings. Has anyone observed inappropriate behavior towards women in the council? This is disturbing, and sends a terrible message to women (and men) considering a future run for public office.
@Newtoner: There is at least one councilor who tends to publicly refer to his female colleagues by first names and his male colleagues as “Councilor (last name).”
@Greg: That is depressing to hear in this day and age. “At least one councilor”? PLEASE tell me this is an isolated phenomenon.
@Greg Enough with the gaslighting!! If their is a councilor who you and others are making innuendo about, then please be honest enough (and cut the passive/aggressive) and call him out so he can respond
Greg – Couldn’t the female call him on it when it does it? The whole ‘decorum’ discussion makes me think of the times when women were viewed as too delicate for work or politics.
I appreciate Council Noel checking to verify they didn’t break open meeting laws. These laws are very important for trust in democracy and shouldn’t be minimized.
I strongly believe that it’s entirely up to the women involved whether or not these conversations are made public. Speculating never comes to any good. Perhaps a solution was found at the gathering and has been addressed satisfactorily – and I don’t mean putting up with bad behavior. Perhaps not.
Just think about the times women have brought up sexism on this blog and the retorts they have received – a lot of them unpleasant ones. Already they have someone anonymously using their getting together for their own purposes – getting Crescent Street back in the budget. We should be applauding these women for coming together to seek a solution instead of just letting whatever is occurring continue.
I would hope we lived in a society where women could voice complaints and be treated fairly, but plainly we don’t. So if they only want to share experiences and pursue solutions among themselves, then it’s their right to do so.
Claire, gaslighting doesn’t mean what you think it does. Greg is not gaslighting but he is being sneaky, prolonging the speculation and fostering suspicion of what problems the councilors discussed.
@Marti: When a councilor tells a reporter that the female councilors met to discuss sexism in the city council, you can’t blame the constituents for speculating. Think about a young woman who’s considering challenging a long-time, “established” male incumbent. What is she to infer from councilor Greenberg’s statement?
PS: Greg, please fix the councilor’s name in the title.
In all the commentary about this incident nobody has mentioned whether the female councilors who’ve expressed concern about the way they’re being treated have raised the matter with new Council President Laredo. I’d be interested to know whether Laredo was approached, and how he responded (or didn’t). Or maybe he’s part of the problem? And what about Council VP Kalis? Seems to me that under previous Council President Lennon and VP Lappin, if this kind of situation were to arise, it would have been addressed quickly and effectively. Maybe the Council needs to take a look at the leaders it selected and consider whether the current 2-male team needs revamping because Laredo & Kalis are coming off as too silent and too ineffective on this matter, at least for my taste.
The reality is we don’t actually know a lot about who did or did not speak to who or when.
We do know, thanks to Amy, that Council President Laredo issued these best practices guidelines eleven days after the meeting at Brenda Noel’s house with the 11 female councilors.
We do not know if the release of the guidelines was motivated by that meeting and/or conversations/concerns from the female councilors.
We also know that since the complaint was anonymous, the AG will not be investigating. So we’re on our own here.
We have 24 councilors and most if not all of them have participated on Village 14 at one time or another. I invite them to do so now as well.
I also hope President Laredo will issue a statement about this.
Investigation or not, the public should insist on an explanation.
Also, let’s give credit to Councilor Greenberg, who, as far as I know, is the only city councilor who has spoken about this publicly so far.
Greg, those best practice guidelines are fascinating. Thanks to Amy for bringing them to light. So maybe President Laredo is trying to take appropriate action behind the scenes. For instance, clearly these guidelines call for Councilors to refer to Councilors by title. Is that now happening? But who wrote this? Was it written indeed in reaction to that Sunday meeting? I agree with you that there remain lots of questions that should be answered to the public’s satisfaction, which to me are more about council civility and leadership than they are about a trumped up charge of open meeting law violation.
Since, in the explanation of the reason for the meeting, the words “in the Chamber” were added, perhaps uncomfortable behavior was not exhibited in the Chamber, but elsewhere. Perhaps in committee meetings? (Yes, maybe taped, Marcia, but not watched or audited by all, at all times.)
Behavior that is uncomfortable to any group lower in an uneven”power” structure should be called out and redirected. I hope our female Councilors will speak out, even if they thought the discomfort was totally dismissible. It could be a learning moment for all leaders, men and women alike! I applaud Council President Laredo for his rapid response if he heard complaints and met them with change.