The Tri Board Tap Dance
Mike Conley
I watched the Board of Selectmen meeting on Monday June 2nd with great interest. In addition to Mr Turco’s meltdown, I was very interested in all the tap dancing that took place around the Tri Board and my allegations that they violated the Open Meeting Law by not having it posted or open to the public.
The basic tenet of their argument was that the Tri Board never “officially” existed because no one voted to create the committee. Very interesting argument. In their minutes from May 13th, the School Committee sates: “There will be a Tri-Board meeting on May 24th between the Finance Committee, School Committee and Board of Selectmen. Those members representing the School Committee will be Chris Callanan, Carmen Urbonas and Cheryl Ford.” If there was no committee, what was the School Committee appointing these members to, a non existent Board?
Betsy Sheeran, the Chairman of the Board of Selectmen went on to lament the fact that they attend so many meetings, are volunteering of their time, as if that makes it ok to avoid complying with the Open Meeting Law.
Again I will ask, let’s suppose they are right (and I highly doubt it), why were the meetings not open to the public? What did they have to hide? Would it have been inconvenient to open it to the public? If nothing else they are certainly guilty of violating the spirit of the Open Meeting Law and in fact I will stand by my opinion that they did violate the law itself. The Tri Board was clearly a governmental body and subject to the Open Meeting Law.
I was pleased to hear Ms. Sheeran say that all of the upcoming meetings will be made public. However, instead of tap dancing all night they should have said they made a mistake, learned from it and moved on. Some members if the Board are apparently unable to admit when they make a mistake.
One last note, Al “The Mayah” Turco should not be skipping his Prozac.
I kept hearing about the Tri Board that was formed to meet and come up with ways to address some of our financial needs in the town. Then I read with interest when Betsy Sheeran, the Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, said that the first few meetings would not be open to the public, but later ones would. That set off a flag. Then I heard Al Turco saying they weren’t public meetings because there was not a majority of any of the Boards meeting, just a sub set of each. Another flag.
In my opinion, the Tri Board is a governmental Body under the Open Meeting Law.
The following is an excerpt from a publication by the Attorney Generals office concerning governmental bodies:
The Law applies to governmental bodies. These are entities defined at the local level as: every board, commission, committee or subcommittee of any district, city, region or town, however elected, appointed or otherwise constituted, and the governing board of a local housing, redevelopment or similar authority; provided, however, that this definition shall not include a town meeting.
Do they meet that criteria? Sure seems like it.
On Thursday May 29th I contacted the Middlesex District Attorney Office and filed a complaint. I was told they had received a couple of complaints already and their initial research indicates that the Tri Board is in fact a governmental body. We are awaiting their final determination.
If they are a governmental body, they must post their meetings 48 hours ahead of time, they must be open to the public un
less they can claim a very specific exemption under the law, they must keep minutes as well.
This is disturbing on a couple of fronts. First, why the need for secrecy by this board? How could 9 Public Officials not know the law? They have Town Counsel at their disposal as well as a myriad of other attorneys associated with town government, some serving in office. In addition, they could have checked with the Attorney generals office if they had doubts. All that aside, let’s say just for fun that it wasn’t a governmental body and not covered b the law, what is the reason for keeping them closed to the public?
These types of things, along with the talk about a majority of the Board meeting at Harrington’s on a regular basis does nothing but breed suspicion on back room deals being brokered and the public being kept in the dark.
Let’s hope they stop
this nonsense.
