By Pat Desmond
Times Staff
1/14/10
The Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office found this week that the Gov. Stoughton Land Trust Committee violated the state Open Meeting Law in four ways. The committee was declared in violation:
• For conducting business by e-mail.
• By failing to meet in a space large enough for all interested.
• By meeting in executive session without a valid purpose.
• And failing to maintain adequate minutes of executive sessions.
The complaint about the conduct of the Town Farm meetings had been brought by John Hajjar back in September. In making the ruling, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Powers ordered the committee to reconvene within 30 days and prepare and approve minutes of the various closed sessions that were held.
He said the committee “must henceforth refrain from conducting business by e-mail” and must disclose all the e-mails that dealt with committee business during 2009. The e-mails must become public within 30 days.
“While the specific number of individuals who communicated by e-mail about committee business is not clear from the minutes, it is apparent that at least several members, and potentially a majority of the committee did so… Even if some of these exchanges were not between a quorum of members… they had the effect of circumventing the requirement of the Open Meeting Law and must be made available to the public,” Powers said as he referenced a recent state Supreme Court case.
The ruling made it clear that the exception the committee used to justify the closed sessions – the fact that the discussions involved real estate – was not valid.
Powers said that the exception for real estate would require the committee to prove the discussions might have a detrimental effect on its negotiating position.
“The committee did not enter, or contemplate entering, into negotiations,” Powers said. “The committee sent a query to the Copeland Foundation as to whether the Copeland Foundation had an interest in the Town Farm property but the Copeland Foundation did not respond to the query.”
The ruling is one of the last handled by the district attorney’s office since the law changed last fall and an expanded version of open meeting law enforcement is now handled by the state attorney general.