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Friday, August 2, 2013

Editorial: Closed meetings violate public trust

Disappointingly, and unsurprisingly, the Baltimore mayor’s office and officials with the city’s Board of Finance offered little more than platitudes after a clear-cut ruling by a state body charged with ensuring government transparency that stated the city blatantly violated Maryland’s Open Meetings Act
The ruling, released this week, followed a May 20 meeting at City Hall that Baltimore finance officials closed to the public and to reporters. At the meeting, they discussed and voted to approve a $107 million request for taxpayer-funded infrastructure upgrades for a large development at Harbor Point...

...Here’s why the closure of the meeting and the lack of speedy action after the stern ruling are so troubling: To any reasonable observer, it’s clear that the meeting was closed not on legal grounds, but to marginalize the public’s participation in a highly controversial subject...

Read full Daily Record Editorial at this link.

Read the Maryland Open Meetings Act Opinion at this link.

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