At the risk of being extremely dull at this liveliest of seasons, I think it might be time to revisit Vermont’s Open Meeting Law. This is the very important rule that protects the public’s right to know, and ensures that no decisions are made in secret by City Councils or Selectboards.
An example of a likely violation was mentioned in today’s Free Press:
South Burlington City Council Chairman Mark Boucher said Monday that he gave retired City Manager Chuck Hafter a laptop computer and printer after Boucher privately polled the rest of the council in April. The council at the end of its regular meeting was asked to re-affirm the private deal of giving away a taxpayer-owned computer to Hafter.
What’s wrong with that, you might ask? The value of the used computer was relatively little and the City has a full back-up. The problem is that, by law, City Council members are not permitted to “privately poll” themselves about a matter concerning City property:
Whenever a quorum (a majority) of a public body meet to discuss the business of the board or to take action, the open meeting law will apply. This means that if a majority of a board find themselves together at a social function they must take care not to discuss the business of the board!
The exclamation point is actually there in the law for emphasis.
A couple of weeks ago, a similar issue was raised in the St. Albans Messenger (not available online) following a meeting of the Town/City Fire Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee includes individuals who also sit on the Town Selectboard. The other members of the Selectboard apparently decided to attend the meeting as well, providing, by default, a quorum capable of decision-making for the Town Selectboard. By law, this obligated the Selectboard to formally “warn” the meeting so that the public would be aware that a quorum would be present. Several of the Selectboard members have been serving in that capacity for enough years that they can not claim ignorance of the law, and the City Manager shares responsibility for this over-sight. As Michelle Monroe mentioned in her Messenger coverage of the meeting, if a member of the public were to complain, the Town would be liable for a fine of $500.
It would appear that such a small fine is insufficient penalty, as City Councils and Selectboards seem to be pretty casual about observing the law. And this returns me to my other complaint about the laws governing conduct by Vermont’s public officials: the lack of adequate definitions and meaningful penalties for the exercise of conflicts of interest. Both conflicts of interest and open meeting violations are byproducts of the traditional intimacy and informality of Vermont’s institutions of government. While this intimacy has it’s upside in terms of unique opportunities for public involvement, we must not allow the nature of this relationship to obscure the fact that allowing violations of open meeting and conflicts of interest to go unchecked will ultimately corrupt the process.
As a Selectboard member, I wholeheartedly agree that the Open Meeting Law needs a thorough examination, and I would gladly provide to the Legislature examples of questionable practices from my own experience.
Some towns do a good job; others are terrible. Here, where I serve, we constantly rely on the traditional boilerplate language to go into Executive Session — “ENTER EXECUTIVE SESSION TO DISCUSS PERSONNEL ISSUES AND CONTRACTS. THE PREMATURE PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE ISSUES TO BE DISCUSSED IN THE EXECUTIVE SESSION WOULD PLACE THE MUNICIPALITY AT A SUBSTANTIAL DISADVANTAGE” — so that no specific reason is given.
Shortly after I joined our Selectboard almost two years ago, I proposed that we bring in the VLCT to provide an in-service on the Open Meeting Law. We never did it and one of the biggest opponents on our board is someone who is also a State Representative.
A local board member from another municipality, now no longer a member of that board, told me once that he was worried about someone being elected to their board because they might “spill the beans.” “We state one reason for going into executive session and then talk about whatever we want,” he said.
Even if the law is strengthened, I would imagine that it would still be circumvented by veteran city/town managers who build up chummy relationships with one or two key board members, come up with their plans and then count on one or two other board members to fall into line in the public session. We are seeing how that worked out right now in Burlington and South Burlington.
Our board chair here also believes that individual Selectboard members give up the right to communicate with the public on issues before the board. For a chilling example (transcribed from Channel 17) of attempted authoritarian rule on a Selectboard, read this excerpt from criticism that was directed at me by another board member, a state legislator:
“Bruce seems to feel that as a member of the Selectboard, having been elected to the Selectboard, he seems to feel that he hasn’t lost or given up his right to speak and that’s absolutely true, but he hasn’t given up his right to speak on issues that are not being considered by the (name of town) Selectboard. On issues that are being considered by the Selectboard, I’m sorry, he does give up the right to speak.
Now, there may be comments from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns that say O.K., you really can do this and possibly from the Secretary of State’s office, but for 26 years on the (name of town) Selectboard, which I have intimate knowledge, that has been our policy whether its written or whether its accepted policy.”
I like what Molly Ivins once wrote: “Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.”
The Open Meeting law is constantly ignored simply because neither the Secretary of State’s nor the Attorney General’s office has had the courage to do anything about it. We can expect more of the same from the AG, but maybe Jim Condos will bring the SofS office into the real world. Calling Jim Condos!!
I have sat in on every select board in one town since 2006, and another town since 2007, that’s four select boards a month for the last three years!
The boards I see are very good at going by the book. In the larger town they are very careful to avoid meeting in a large enough group that triggers the Open Meeting law. Some board members will create a ‘taskforce’ to discuss budgets of different town departments, and the other member who are not on the task force stay away so as to NOT trigger that law. Conversely, when they had a christmas party to which all Select Board members would attend, they announced it as a meeting – again so as to be compliant with the law!
However, once a Select Board member used his insider knowledge gained in an Executive Session to interfere with a business transaction! Not many people know about this, and those that do don’t know what to do about that.
apparently some time in the last decade or so, someone decided to bug the Charlotte town offices. Very Nixon.