The complaint focuses on three executive sessions held to discuss damage control relating to allegations of plagiarism against Superintendent of Schools David Fleishman. You can read about it here.
The Open Meeting Law defines emergency as “a sudden, generally unexpected occurrence or set of circumstances demanding immediate action” – in this case, immediate action was “required” because the TAB and other media had started asking questions about a Lion’s Roar article accusing the Superintendent of plagiarism.
Even for a newspaper, it’s hard to accept that bad press rises to the level of an “emergency.”
Does anybody know how things ended up when the TAB filed an Open Meeting Law complaint against the mayor a few months ago? I don’t remember if the paper ever ran a follow-up story.
Good! I’ve been meaning to do it in case no one else had, but have just been really busy. The false representation of what the meetings were about has been bothering me more than the plagiarism. That, and the fact that not one of the eight SC members, said ‘hey, wait a minute, this isn’t really an emergency,’ or ‘why do we need an executive session if the supt wants to be transparent?’
The Atty General has said that if a municipality starts posting meetings on-line, then the practice needs to be followed consistently. They rules have always required that evidence of Open Meetings be kept on file. Why does the City keep the paper version and purge the electronic version?
Gail, the OML determinations by the AG’s office are posted here. Enter “Newton” in the box for “City/Town” and you will retrieve decisions concerning all complaints against public bodies in Newton since 2010. I note that the only posted determination relates to a violation of the OML by the Licensing Commission for failing to comply with the provisions for going into executive session (OML 2011-3; 2/3/2011). The following excerpt is highly instructive as it relates to the current situation:
Nota bene: this decision is noteworthy not merely for the subject matter, but also because it concerns a recent (2011) OML violation that happened in Newton relating to similar circumstances.
I have a suggestion for the City; hire an open meeting law/public records compliance officer to ensure that all public meeting notices are timely and in full compliance with the law before they are posted. I’m going to assume (someone please correct me if I’m wrong) that the City Solicitor’s Office is not the most accessible resource for help with questions about compliance, and it seems pretty clear that the Clerk’s office does not conduct any sort of compliance review of the notices they post.
I’m also assuming that questions about compliance come up with some regularity as we have turnover with elected officials and commission members. Again, I hope somebody with some actual first hand insight will chime in here. I note though that it wasn’t all that long ago that we were discussing here on the Village14 blog whether a student record had to be redacted or could be disclosed without redaction, and there were many different opinions from people with sound reasoning for their conclusions.
@Lisap, this does not fully address your suggestion but many (hopefully all) elected officials are receiving OML training by the City Clerk and Legal departments. Early this year we had a few sessions for members of the 4 area councils, one of which I attended, and I know the training has extended to various boards and committees.
For compliance, I would not think that the Clerk would be expected to file a claim if a meeting notice was filed late. And I think as residents we should be expected to take advantage of open meetings by attending them and keeping our government on track to comply.