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| The Washington Post Editorial |
The original complaint was filed on May 31, 2014, by a member of the Parents' Coalition. The filing of the Complaint brought to light the creation of a backroom committee to discuss the Board of Education's (BOE) use of credit cards. When the complaint was filed the committee had already been formed and had met without any public notice.
On June 8, 2014, The Washington Post published a lengthy Editorial suggesting that the BOE had something to hide.
After the Complaint was filed, BOE President Kauffman changed his mind and made subsequent meetings of the credit card committee open to the public. As part of the filings that followed the initial Complaint, the BOE finally released the memorandum that had created the backroom credit card committee. The memorandum was made public on July 16th, almost two months after the committee had been created.
The filing of the Open Meetings Act complaint on May 31st was the catalyst for the opening of future meetings of this committee and forced the BOE to release the memorandum that originally created the committee.
The Open Meetings Act Compliance Board has determined that BOE President Kauffman's creation of a backroom, closed door committee did not actually violate current Maryland Open Meetings Act law. However, the process of permitting the public to question actions of boards by the filing of a complaint regarding the Maryland Open Meetings Act served to push the BOE to open meetings that otherwise would have been closed.
Through the complaint procedure, a member of the public was allowed to question a secret, closed door meeting and bring attention to the backroom dealings of a Board of Education. Shining a light on this backroom committee forced its existence into the sunlight and allowed the public and the press to attend and observe subsequent meetings.
Nice job coalition!
ReplyDeleteExcellent work. Next step, generally, is to work on clarifying the law. All "advisory committees" of this sort should be public bodies and the terms in the statute should reflect that. It is a common problem that violators will claim that they can do "X" or "Y," and without a complaint they are not stopped from making up their own rules. In general, the lawyers who give these public bodies advice look for loopholes or shrug their shoulders (like those who advised the UM Regents to hold illegal meetings, possibly by saying nothing or glossing over parts of the law when asked).
ReplyDeleteGOOD LUCK to any individual or group taking the next step, "work on clarifying the law", after an election year. Quite a challenge for sure to bring about needed change. Looky at previous post.
ReplyDeleteRemember: If it makes sense it is illegal!
ReplyDelete