WAMC this month filed a state open meeting law complaint against Great Barrington, Massachusetts after officials in the Berkshire County town attempted to restrict access to a public meeting on April 17th.
On Tuesday, the town formally responded to WAMC’s complaint, admitting it was in the wrong and saying it will revisit its practices moving forward.
WAMC's Lucas Willard spoke with WAMC’s Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes about the outcome...
So, on April 17th, the town of Great Barrington was meeting to discuss two citizens petitions that involved purchasing water works that serve the community to address long-standing water quality issues. On the way into the meeting, for the second time in the last year, I was stopped on the way in by members of the town staff who told me that as a nonresident of Great Barrington, I had to get the permission of the town moderator Michael Wise to enter the meeting. This is not standard practice. This is not in line with Massachusetts laws around town meeting or open meeting laws. So, at the meeting itself, I took issue with this and sort of entered kind of a melee with members of the town staff throughout the course of the evening trying to point out that this clearly was an obvious violation of the Secretary of State, William Galvin's guide to town meetings, which the town of Great Barrington itself links to on their own website, which says succinctly that any member of the public may attend town meeting,
So, you were eventually able to access the meeting, correct?
That's correct. So, this was less about me being held up from doing my job for the listeners at WAMC, and more about the idea of there being this arbitrary restriction on attending a public meeting that simply should not be the case and is not the case. What added fuel to the fire is that when I briefly left the meeting, at one point, I encountered the town staff offering the same explanation to another nonresident who wanted to attend the meeting, saying that he had to get the permission of the moderator. At that time, the moderator was on stage moderating the meeting, so they essentially had made it impossible for this member of the public to exercise their right to attend a public meeting, and that's kind of what pushed me to escalate this to an open meeting complaint with the town and with the Commonwealth itself.
And I just also wanted to point out in the letter that was sent to WAMC from the town of Great Barrington on Tuesday, the letter says, “First, the town acknowledges that a limitation on entry to the place of the town meeting based on status as a Great Barrington resident, and where the attendance had not reached the capacity of the auditorium should not have occurred.” The town also goes to sort of parse out the language in town code that says “no person, unless a registered voter of the town, may address a town meeting without special permission of the moderator.” And the letter points out that the code provision does not relate to access to a town meeting. So, the town here has said that they were in the wrong to not allow you to attend the meeting. What do you feel about that portion of the town’s statement?
Well, it comes as no surprise, because, you know, it was, this is not a particularly complicated law that I was referencing at the meeting. And frankly, you know, by the end of the meeting, after this long, intense night of speaking with the town clerk, the town solicitor, the town moderator, the town's board of registrars, I knew that WAMC was legally in the right about this. So, I'm very pleased to see that the town is acknowledging that they were misapplying aspects of this code. And it goes to show, like, you know, how significant a misinterpretation of policy can be. I was not trying to address the town. I was not trying to vote in the town meeting. I was simply there to observe, as is my duty as a WAMC reporter. But, this crucial misinterpretation, you know, really did pose a barrier to basic participation in the democratic process for, you know, all Americans, which is simply that if you want to attend an open meeting, you don't have anyone's permission to do that. So, me and WAMC, we knew we were in the right from the first second. So, I'm very happy that Great Barrington has agreed to, you know, acknowledge this error and move forward in a manner that will no longer bar people from entering meetings. I wasn't trying to vote or participate, nor was this other attendee, but this arbitrary holding back of people entering public meetings is inappropriate, and I'm very pleased the town is acknowledging this and moving forward. The letter also says that the moderator will address this at the town meeting on Saturday. So, I hope that it's very clear to people that if you go to a public meeting, there is no one's permission you need to solicit prior to that.
And the letter also states that the town of Great Barrington will not be conducting a formal complaint review process. Reason being that a meeting of the town's legislative body, in relation to the state's Open Meeting Law, is not subject to that law. This is getting into the weeds a little bit, but it does, you know, the town does make a distinction of what is and is not allowable under the Open Meeting Law.
Yeah. And just to speak to that Lucas, you know, it is a bit of a miasma of legalese, this large paragraph. To be very clear to the listeners, the town is sort of going into the weeds on this, as you say, to not conduct a formal complaint review process that I requested in my complaint. But you know, literally every other part of the message is that it’s going to be modifying its procedures going forward, to borrow the concluding line of the letter to WAMC, and that they were in the wrong in this instance. So, you know, the elaborate lengths to which they will explain not conducting a formal complaint review process, sort of is, fortunately, to what we were trying to identify and address, ancillary to the main core point that WAMC was making, which simply is that you can't arbitrarily choose who can attend a public meeting. So, you know, while they're not conducting this formal complaint review process, citing these labyrinthine legal reasons, it is what it is. But, I'm I think the major takeaway is that that restriction on people was, as I pointed out, at the meeting on April 17th, inappropriate, and hopefully moving forward, they will live up to this promise.
