A parents' group has been dogging the Montgomery County School Board for the usual apparent back-room, secret dealing that gets citizens so steamed.
I can't comment on the issues but I will say that I support the Parents' Coalition 100 percent. Every public body in the state needs someone or ones watching what goes on and keeping an eye out for evasions of public meeting law, known as the Open Meetings Act.
At http://parentscoalitionmc.blogspot.com/... they report that they obtained credit card records by an information act request, and within days, the board president set up a three-member subcommittee to review, essentially, the board's expense policies.
Although the Open Meetings Compliance Board just ruled that the subcommittee didn't meet the legal definition of a "public body" required to post notice and meet in front of community members, the complaint brought about change. It now meets in public.
Even if there's nothing illegal, even if there's nothing to hide, the appearance of it signals a failure in transparency generally and a failure by that particular public body.
The original complaint was filed on May 31, 2014 ... [after] the creation of a backroom committee to discuss the Board of Education's (BOE) use of credit cards. [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. ...
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.
In Maryland, as most everywhere, education is a big bucks item. Tracking the behavior of elected school board members is a useful way to learn how they're managing
our money.
The Loophole
Fortunately, the Open Meetings Act is short and simple. unfortunately it's astonishing how many lawyers and public body members can't quite get it. It's sad how many lawyers fulfill their creative urges by finding loopholes that may or may not be there.
In recent years the state's taken two little steps to get electeds and appointeds to understand.
-- There's an online training; at least one member or staffer has to take it annually and register their name with the Open Meetings Compliance Board. In true Maryland General Assembly fashion, the original bill required all members and it was immediately watered down. It's not clear if the law means that a new person takes it every year.
-- If a violation has been found, the public body has to report on the violation to the public at its next open session. Publc body members must sign off on a copy of the opinion to show they have seen -- maybe not absorbed, but seen -- the opinion.
In the past, findings were ignored or glossed over. Attorneys are especially adept at telling the public body that the violations were "technical." in truth, there are no technical violations.
Fundamentally -- and it took years for me to grok this -- the Act is written from the General Assembly's perspective.
Since they create subcommittees on the fly during every legislative session, and I imagine even between sessions, they exempted temporary, informal subcommittees from the requirements of the Act. This causes problems.
They exempted them not by saying, "temporary subcommittees of the General Assembly formed during session ..." and so on. Rather, they define public bodies by acts of formal creation (rule, resolution, bylaw, statute).
Outside the General Assembly this is a recipe for mischief.
I advocate amending the law to specify that legislative subcommittees of the General Assembly have limited obligations under the Act, but all other subcommittees, no matter how created, are public bodies.
This creates no real problem. If these subcommittee have something secret to talk about, and it falls under the 14 permitted classifications in the law, they follow the steps to hold a closed session and document it.