North Adams Responds to Open Meeting Complaint
 Mayor Richard Alcombright reads off the city's response to an Open Meeting complaint on Tuesday. |
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — An Open Meeting complaint filed by a reporter from The Berkshire Eagle over a non-descriptive posted executive session by the School Committee in December may be closed for not being submitted within the law's 30-day window.
The attorney general's office in a letter dated March 24, 2015, found the complaint "appears that it may have been filed with the public body outside of the 30-day window in which to file a complaint."
The Berkshire Eagle was given until Monday, April 6, to respond with a "statement as to why the complaint is not untimely" or the matter would be closed.
"Basically, they are not entertaining a complaint because of the timing situation of the filing," Mayor Richard Alcombright told the School Committee on Tuesday. He said he had spoken with the Eagle's editor, Kevin Moran, prior to the meeting and had been told the newspaper planned to contact the attorney general's office for more clarification on the 30-day rule.
"So I don't know quite where this stands," he said. "Is it resolved? Is it not resolved?"
The mayor, however, agreed that the session at issue in the complaint, while he believed it properly posted, "does not clearly state the purpose of the executive session."
The public posting at City Hall stated simply "executive session"; the action agenda publicly available at the Dec. 2 meeting stated "to conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with non-union employees."
In his response to the attorney general, read at Tuesday's School Committee meeting, he said future postings will be more "fully and clearly" described and on par with the descriptive "action agendas" available at School Committee meetings.
"In the instant matter," he wrote, "I find that this was done through inadvertence and is not the result of an intention to circumvent the law."
The committee had on Dec. 2, 2014, entered into executive session; it came out of executive session after 38 minutes to vote on raises for 11 staff and administrators. The vote and the raises were detailed in the minutes of the meeting made available at a School Committee meeting on Jan. 6, 2015, and posted on the district's website.
The vote was written about in an article in The Eagle in January by reporter Adam Shanks. On Feb. 18, 2015, another reporter for The Eagle, Phil Demers, who had not attended either the Dec. 2 or the Jan. 6 meeting, filed the complaint.
Demers' complaint states neither the public posting nor the action agenda listed the pay raises as a topic of discussion. "An interested member of the public could not have had the same knowledge, and therefore the law was violated."
The complaint asks that the raises be revoked and the School Committee "should have to discuss the reasons and rationals behind them in public session. That is democracy, and if in this case there exists a good reason not to follow its precepts, let the committee make it known."
Open Meeting law requires complaints to be filed with the public body in question within 30 days of the alleged violation or from the date it "should reasonably have been discovered."
Alcombright noted "the alleged violation was seventy-eight days prior to the date of the complaint."
He also questioned the date of the complaint because both he and the superintendent had been interviewed about the raises for The Eagle for a story published Jan. 8 that was attached to the complaint.
"The complainant is a reporter for The Berkshire Eagle assigned to cover matters arising in Northern Berkshire. He should have reasonably discovered the violation, if any, at least at the time that The Berkshire Eagle reported the story," the mayor read.
School Committee member John Hockridge said he wanted to make it clear "that it is normal and proper procedure to negotiate contracts in executive session."
Open Meeting law lists contract negotiations or bargaining talks with non-union personnel as a reason for executive session.
"I think some people had the impression we were trying to hide something," Hockridge said. "This is procedure. This is the way it's always done everywhere."
The committee voted 5-1 (the mayor had left the meeting prior to executive session) to 1 percent increases for three fiscal years and some flat salary hikes (but no retroactive pay), and changes in longevity step raises for 11 employees including the superintendent, business manager, principals and other administrative staff.
North Adams School Committee Open Meeting Complaint by iBerkshires.com
Tags: North Adams School Committee, open meeting complaint, raises,
