1,564.455 @ 9:29 pm March 8
1,564,306@7:18 pm
Adam Knight has spent his history on the Medford City Council congratulating people or issuing condolences. It was very inappropriate of Knight to give a condolence to one of my closest friends who was no fan of Knight's.
Patricia Brady Doherty wrote this on the Medford Moderates page. Someone posted it on my Real Medford Mass Politics page.
I agree with Brady-Doherty.
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"I respectfully disagree with the acting city solicitor. A resolution offered under suspension does not violate the Open Meeting Law if the resolution topic was not reasonably anticipated by the City Council.
The City Council’s current and longstanding practice of allowing resolutions to be offered under suspension and of tabling such discussions for future meetings is exactly in keeping with the legislative intent of the Open Meeting Law and with the determinations made by the Massachusetts Attorney General (“AG”). The AG’s Office has determined that: 1) if a topic not on the agenda is deemed to be an emergency, a public body such as the City Council may hold substantive discussions on the topic; and 2) that a non-emergency topic may be offered if, wherever possible, substantive discussion of the topic is postponed. The law does not prevent the public from offering resolutions under suspension on topics not on the agenda. See 940 CMR 29.00, et seq.; OML 2014-117.
Acting City Solicitor Scanlon errs in stating: “The Attorney General’s Office for the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts has determined that [the] only matters that can be discussed are those listed on the meeting notice. See OML 2014-117.” See Scanlon Correspondence Dated February 23, 2020. This is incorrect and directly contrary to the actual determination. What OML 2014-117 actually states is that “[w]hile public bodies may discuss topics not listed on the meeting notice if they were not anticipated 48 hours in advance of the meeting, we encourage postponement of discussion on such items whenever possible.” OML 2014-117 (internal citations omitted).
Scanlon mischaracterizes the AG’s findings in OML 2014-117, where the AG’s office had investigated a public board that “violated the Open Meeting Law by deliberating on an anticipated topic not listed in the notice” that was “a longstanding issue” of which the board was aware because “the topic had been listed on at least four prior notices.” See OML 2014-117.
The key analysis is whether the topic was anticipated by the public body, not whether the topic was listed on the agenda. The City Council’s practice of allowing resolutions to be offered under suspension grants the public an open forum to introduce unanticipated discussions publicly, encouraging transparency in choices of future agenda topics.
8:52 am March 9, 2020
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