Cell towers are being proposed for public school playgrounds in Montgomery County, Prince George's County and Anne Arundel County.
How much notice do parents get of these proposed school construction projects?
In Prince George's County the answer has been none. The Prince George's Telecommunications Transmission Facility Coordinating Committee that is charged with approving these projects was operating in violation of the Maryland Open Meetings Act. A complaint was filed and the Committee immediately began to change their ways, but compliance with the Open Meetings Act comes too late for the schools where the cell towers are already being built. Too bad for those communities and parents.
The Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board has given the Prince George's TTFC Committee a pass on the Open Meetings Act violations that they immediately corrected, but cites them for their failure to keep minutes of their actions.
Yes, it does make it hard for the public to track the actions of a committee where there are no meeting notices, no meeting location, no agendas, and no minutes.
The failure of the Prince George's County Telecommunications Transmission Facility Coordinating Committee to follow the Maryland Open Meetings Act has made it very easy for vendors to quickly build cell towers on public school playgrounds in Prince George's County.
And the penalty and punishment for the violation is. . .
ReplyDelete60 cell towers on public school playgrounds in Prince George's County. Congratulations to the cell tower vendors! Big win for them!
DeleteChildren? Not so much. But, hey, they don't vote and don't contribute to election campaigns.
How much did Duncan have to do with this?
ReplyDeleteWTF?! The Compliance Board's opinion commends the County for their web site improvements as a result of an Open Meetings Act complaint against them. Geeze, instead the board should have commended the complainant for alerting the county and the board about possible Open Meeting Act violations. Neither the Act nor the Compliance Board favors members of the general public. Thanks Janis S. ("Complainant") for improvements to the County web site. A change to the Act is long overdue to mandate dated notices.
ReplyDeleteCorrect. These new members of the Open Meetings Compliance Board are all about phone calls to Boards and thanking them for FINALLY ATTEMPTING to comply with the Open Meetings Act. There was no "wrong link" before. The webpage didn't exist period. We have documentation to prove that.
DeleteFYI- the TTFC Committee put up an Agenda for the November 19th meeting this week. Oh, but oops! It was the Agenda from the October meeting. Yes, they just posted the same Agenda again. Let's all clap for that!
Side step the Open Meetings Compliance Board and take Open Meeting Act scofflaws to court. Considering that Act training is readily available (OMA Manual & online training), ignorance or attempting to comply isn't an excuse. I'd contribute to cover court costs.
DeleteIt's hard to take the Open Meetings Compliance Board, or any other public body, seriously that doesn't use the modern open gov method of video taping or webcasting its annual and other public meetings and then archiving the recordings online.
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