Jurist, Harris Weigh In On Open Meeting Violations

On Thursday evening the Wayland School Committee discussed a recent letter from the Massachusetts attorney general’s office that said the committee had violated the state’s Open Meeting Law 25 times.

The decision stems from a complaint filed last year by Wayland resident George Harris, who said he didn’t attend a single meeting he included in the complaint. Instead, the complaint, he said, emerged from observable issues with information available to the public and what he was able to see via WayCam broadcasts of the meetings.

“With Open Meeting Law, you can only complain about a violation that you can observe,” Harris explained. “For me to know there is a violation, you have to have something public that you have access to.”

Harris’ complaint had to do with the way in which the School Committee entered executive session and the reasons for which it did so. He also took issue with the minutes that involved those executive sessions.

School Committee Chair Louis Jurist acknowledged Harris’ complaint as “a reasonable comment,” but also said it was “not big at all.”

“[Harris] never alleged that we discussed something we shouldn’t have,” Jurist said via phone interview. “[He] never alleged that we were deceptive or anything along those lines. His complaint had to do with a procedural matter.

“When you say ‘negotiation,’ you have to say which union, for example,” Jurist said, describing the process for entering executive session.

Harris agreed that in this case it was a simple procedural issue, but “my sense is that they do not have a good understanding of the Open Meeting Law, and I think it’s because they don’t care,” he added.

Jurist, however, said he appreciated that concerns regarding executive session procedure had been brought to the committee’s attention.

“I can’t speak for other committees and other boards [in Wayland], but [the School Committee is] very, very careful to only discuss issues in executive session that are appropriate to discuss in executive session,” Jurist said. “If there’s at all a concern, we check with our lawyer.”

Jurist said that before the Open Meeting Law changed last July, there were seminars offered for all committee and board members. He added that Assistant District Attorney Robert Bender explained that the new law “makes law what had previously been recommended.”

Harris acknowledged that the School Committee immediately agreed to respond to some portions of his complaint when he first alerted the committee of his concerns.  Harris said he received an e-mail response from Jurist thanking him for raising the concerns and assuring him that the committee would begin immediately to conduct a full role-call vote when entering executive session as well as be more specific regarding the reason for entering the session.

While these were elements of Harris’ complaint, they did not address the entirety of the complaint, which also asked that the School Committee’s minutes be amended to reflect more specific reasons for entering executive session.

Because the School Committee did not proceed with amending those minutes, Harris moved forward with his complaint, submitting it to the attorney general.

“It didn’t have to happen this way,” Harris said, adding that he wished the issue had been resolved on a local level. “Why didn’t the committee just fix [the minutes]?”

For his part, Jurist said the School Committee did not go through with amending the minutes because it was unclear to him whether the minutes could be amended to reflect what should have happened rather than what actually did take place.

Now that the attorney general has specifically recommended the minutes be amended, the School Committee is taking steps to make that happen. Jurist said packets with the minutes from the 25 meetings and executive sessions in question are being printed up.

The 25 sets of minutes will be divided evenly among the five School Committee members at their next meeting on Feb. 28. Members will then review and amend the minutes, and Jurist said he expects to vote on the amended minutes some time in March.