Font ResizeAYER -- "As a town attorney, my goal is always to keep yourselves out of trouble," said Lauren Goldberg of the Boston law firm Kopelman and Paige, Ayer's town counsel.
Goldberg lead a legal workshop attended by nearly thirty Ayer town officials on Wednesday, Nov. 4, representing a smattering of the town officials from many town boards, commissions and departments.
The briefing was to get officials up-to-speed on changes to two key state legal policies that strive for greater governmental transparency -- the Open Meeting Law and the Public Records Laws.
The Ayer Finance Committee, was present in full force, with all five members present for the hour and a half meeting. There was one Ayer Selectman, Carolyn McCreary, present. Some boards had no representation on hand, while others dispatched representatives on their behalf. It was strongly suggested, but not mandated, all town officials attend the first of two seminars.
First, the audience was briefed on the Open Meeting Law, presently enforced by the District Attorney's Office but due to switch over to Attorney General's Office oversight next July. Changes to the law will also require posting of a proposed meeting agenda in advance of the meeting itself.
School Committee Chairman Dan Gleason took the opportunity to double check the legal advise he received by Town Administrator Shaun Suhoski, that school regionalization meetings are posted as working meetings of the Ayer School Committee
Chance encounters of a quorum (or ruling majority) attending a public meeting of another board are permitted, but deliberation is to be avoided and clear disclosures made that the members are there in their individual, not collective capacity when providing feedback before the host committee's proceedings. Otherwise, the students were warned, "don't sit together, don't talk to teach other ... don't whisper to each other."
All town meetings are held in person, and not by chain e-mail deliberation. Goldberg told the assembly to be wary of the "reply all" function when communicating with one another, Goldberg said, as cross-communicating outside of the publicly posted and open-to-all meeting can spark violations of the Open Meeting Law. Especially troublesome are expressing opinions that start "I feel, I believe, I care, I don't care" in cyberspace.
Pushing the e-frontier on chatter, Goldberg said the next quagmire might be Facebook and other social room chat spaces, where a quorum can be reached and opinions shared, intentionally or inadvertently circumventing the Open Meeting Law. It doesn't matter if you have 200 "friends" on Facebook, she said, but it does matter if there was any meeting of the minds on an issue before your board "however brief it may have been."
Personnel Board Chairman Dennis Curran questioned the point, stating it "seems like public business in the most public format possible" when officials are chatting in an open e-forum.
"Don't shoot the messenger," said Goldberg, who added that though "the world is changing very quickly. You're supposed to have your discussions in a public meeting."
"We've all seen the fiasco in Boston," said Goldberg, referring a recent probe into missing and deleted e-mails between Boston mayor Tom Menino and members of his staff. "This is a big issue if you have an e-mail deliberation between a quorum. I don't see how someone has lost out in that public (Facebook example) discussion, but the law doesn't care. Those e-mails will become a public record."
"If you discover that you've done that, at your next meeting, bring them (e-mails) to the next meeting and make them an appendage to the minutes and then have a full and fair discussion on the record," she advised.
The lawyer said meeting minutes should flesh out the discussions that occurred and reflect those in attendance as well as those missing so there's no guessing later as to what commissioners were present. Clear general statements as to why boards are going into executive, or closed-door, sessions are a must, though the exact details are not required.
The minutes discussion lead naturally into the second half of the presentation, focused on the Public Records Law. In general, the records must be maintained for seven years unless they are of the types that must be maintained indefinitely or are on a permissible disposal schedule under law.
No reason is required for a record request -- the law requires they be provided freely but with guidelines. Governments have at most ten days to respond to a request, meaning the record is provided in that time or the town must give a cost estimate in while filling large copying requests or redacting sensitive data. Reasonable fees related to the true record expense can be charged, but a cloudier question is how much, if anything, a volunteer clerk for an uncompensated board my charge for records requests rued Finance Committee Chairman Brian Muldoon.
A closing comment brought the records-rundown full circle. Curran asked why the town doesn't step up and provide electronic storage capacity for all town generated records. "We're really, truly working on that," said Suhoski, adding that there needs to be upgrades to the Internet service and full archival technologies in place to aid in the system.
While there's an up-front cost to such technology, Curran said, "That may be a tremendous cost saver to the town versus tracking down requests because the town will always have these documents" stored electronically.
"Make sure you speak up at Town Meeting," said Suhoski regarding a funding mechanism to drive such town technology forward. Suhoski's budget for the current year initially included, then dropped, funding for IT upgrades. There are few town officials with town-sponsored e-mail addresses. Most officials continue to conduct official town business on personal e-mail accounts, which could prove to be troublesome if and when public records demands are launched their way.
The workshop proved to be instructive for both sides of the conference room table, as board members were provided the broad rules on compliance, while other attendees could learn the ins-and-outs of records requests and open meeting requirements.
Laden with detail, the laws provoked some scattered grumbling from the room of largely unpaid town volunteers. For the armchair observers of town government, it was an opportunity for the rules to be laid-out for all to digest.
