In This Corner - Robert Slager |
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The truth behind the open meeting fiasco
The latest political firestorm in Wareham is, as always, a matter of perspective. The recent ruling by the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office that selectmen violated open meeting law in the hiring process of the new town administrators has left the partisans salivating and at least one selectman – chairman Bruce Sauvageau – fuming over what he perceives to be malicious action by his political opponents.
So, are these alleged open meeting law violations self-inflicted wounds by the Board of Selectmen or are they just another volley in a political smear job designed to influence April’s town election?
The answer is a little bit of both.
According to assistant district attorney Mary Lee, selectmen violated open meeting law 14 times during the search for a new town administrator. That would make 19 such violations since 2006, Lee wrote in a letter to town counsel Kopelman and Paige.
That certainly seems like a shocking number at first glace. But upon closer examination the issue isn’t quite so clear-cut.
The first violation occurred in 2006, when Mary Jane Pillsbury, Cindy Parola, and Renee Fernandes-Abbott communicated through a series of e-mails in a plot to strip Sauvageau of his chairmanship of the Board of Selectmen. The DA ruled that such an action violated the spirit of open meeting law and asked those involved to apologize for their actions. Although Fernandes-Abbott apologized in a prepared statement she quickly said she didn’t regret her actions and that she would do it again if the need arose.
The next violation took place the following year. Selectmen voted to appoint John McAuliffe as new town administrator in executive session. Selectman Brenda Eckstrom, who served as chairman at the time, quickly contacted the Observer to alert us of the board’s procedural error. Nobody had filed an open meeting law complaint because nobody else knew about it except for the board. Eckstrom said selectmen had planned to hold a vote in public session as required by open meeting law but wanted to publicly apologize for the error because she wanted her board to have more transparency than the previous one.
Two open meeting law violations stemmed from a request by John Decas for minutes to meeting surrounding the controversial eminent domain taking of Swifts Beach property. One of the violations was legitimate. Jane Donahue had taken hand-written notes of an executive session meeting during the settlement the town eventually reached with Barbara Deighton Haupt. Town counsel could not make sense of her short-hand and requested she transcribe her notes. She was slow in doing so and allowed the deadline for turning those notes over to Decas to elapse.
The other violation was ridiculous, however. Some of the meeting minutes that Decas requested from 2002-2003 were missing (they had been stored at the Wareham Free Library for years). The DA acknowledged that there was “no evidence” that Patrick Tropeano had ever compiled those minutes when he served as selectmen clerk during that time period. There is also no evidence that the DA’s office ever actually asked Tropeano if he did, in fact, create minutes for those meetings. That seems like a pretty important question to ask, and the DA’s office never did.
But because the current board was technically responsible for fulfilling any public records request, the DA ruled that selectmen had violated opening meeting law because they couldn’t provide copies of minutes that may have been stolen or were never actually compiled.
The next alleged violation is absolutely absurd. The DA’s office ruled that selectmen violated open meeting law when selectmen John Cronan called department heads Mark Gifford and David Simmons “two of the biggest rats in town” during an illegally broadcast executive session meeting last year. Apparently selectmen should have invited Gifford and Simmons to attend the session in advance because they are all a bunch of mind readers and knew Cronan would make such a comment.
That makes five alleged violations. The other 14 were raised by the DA’s office this week, all stemming from the search for a new TA. According to Lee, selectmen failed to publicly appoint themselves to the preliminary search committee. The only way selectmen would have been allowed to conduct preliminary interviews in private is if they had taken this procedural step first. Because they didn’t, the DA is claiming each time selectmen met in executive session for interviews they violated open meeting law. That occurred seven times.
This is where the issue gets cloudy. The selectmen did make a procedural mistake. They should have announced in public they would served as the subcommittee for preliminary interviews. That single mistake is being counted as eight violations of the open meeting law by the District Attorney’s office. The DA is also claiming selectmen didn’t provide four sets of public meeting minutes as requested. Sauvageau said he never received such a request, and as chairman of the board he should have been notified directly by the DA. The DA is further claiming that role call votes weren’t taken during two of the executive session meetings. Cronan, who currently serves as clerk of the selectmen, said he remembers differently but would need to research the matter to be certain. He added that if a mistake was made it was simply an accident.
So, there you have it. Those are the 19 alleged violations of the open meeting law since 2006. Three are clearly legitimate. Pillsbury, Parola and Fernandes-Abbott admitted to violating the law when they conspired in private to strip Sauvageau of his chairmanship. Selectmen violated the law when Donahue blew the deadline by not transcribing her notes for Swifts Beach quickly enough. Selectmen violated the law again by failing to publicly announce they would form the preliminary search committee to hire a new TA.
The legitimacy of the rest of the alleged violations remains questionable.
The cold, hard truth is that Sauvageau foolishly allowed this latest controversy to happen. He’s the chairman of the board. Yes, this open meeting law violation is petty. If Sauvageau had simply stated in public that his board would be conducting preliminary interviews in private none of this would have happened. It’s not like anyone was trying to pull a fast one. All of those executive session meetings would have been permissible if a single sentence was uttered in public. Clearly it was just an oversight. What possible motive would suggest otherwise?
But by this point Sauvageau should know better than to give his political opponents any ammunition to use against him and the board. The partisans are watching like hawks, ready to exploit any open meeting law violation, no matter how small and insignificant that violation may be. It’s Sauvageau’s responsibility as chairman to make absolutely certain his board is following open meeting law to the exact letter. And it’s not just to keep the political partisans at bay. Open meeting law is vitally important because it ensures transparency in town government. Sauvageau needs to read it, learn it and live it. It doesn’t matter if violations are simple oversights. There can be no more oversights. End of story.
Yes, open meeting law as it is currently written has flaws and is far too open to interpretation. One of the biggest problems with the law is that an assistant district attorney should not serve as judge and jury for open meeting law violations. Sauvageau is right when he says his board should be entitled a fair and impartial hearing before an actual judge, especially in light of the potential conflict of interest the DA’s office may have with Wareham selectmen. Selectmen and the DA are locked in a heated battle over possession of computer disks related to last year’s audit of town-owned computers. The DA’s office has also been publicly criticized by the board regarding interpretive past rulings of open meeting law violations. For Lee to offer her personal opinions in her ruling - that the violations appear intentional - is highly inappropriate and most certainly should raise a red flag. There is no evidence to support such a claim.
Responsibility for investigating and enforcing potential open meeting law violations will be taken out of the hands of the District Attorney’s office and placed under the umbrella of the Attorney General beginning this July. That’s certainly a step in the right direction.
As expected, the Standard-Times has twisted this issue beyond recognition in its ceaseless pandering to the political partisans in Wareham. The recent open meeting law complaint didn’t come from a Wareham resident. It came from Standard-Times senior correspondent Steve Urbon, who engaged in a shouting match with Sauvageau last year in the Town Hall parking lot. For the Standard-Times to label the town administrator interview sessions with TA candidates as “secret” meetings is sensationalism at its worst. The word “secret” implies deceptive intent. The facts suggest otherwise.
Yes, dirty politics have a lot to do with all this. But ultimately the ball rests in the selectmen’s court. If they follow the letter of the open meeting law they can avoid this kind of political embarrassment in the future.
It's really up to them.
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In This Corner - Robert Slager - 6 opinions posted | 