Resident Files Open Meeting Law Complaint

WINCHESTER -- Maybe Peggy Schleicher likes Lisa Wong and hopes she becomes Winchester's new Town Manager. But that's not her point. It's the process that led to Wong that has her frustrated. It's a process that she says time and time again has violated state law.

Schleicher filed an Open Meeting Law Complaint with the Massachusetts Attorney General Tuesday, saying in the complaint that the committee in charge of compiling a field of qualified candidates couldn't even get its own name right. According to the Winchester resident, town officials have 14 days now to respond to her complaint in writing.

"In Winchester, I was running into too many roadblocks as I tried to gather information about the selection process for a new town manager and the role of the Town Manager Search Advisory Committee (TMSAC)," said Schleicher in an email to Patch. "Even today no one has been able to identify the charge given to the TMSAC -- not Chairman Howley nor our current Town Manager! The more questions I ask, the more resistance I run into."

The subject of her complaint is the Winchester Town Manager Search Advisory Committee and its members Tom Howley (chair), Samantha Allison, Marty Jones, Jifeng Liu, Deb Molkonian, Marissa Patterson, and Betsy Sands.

Schleicher points out two violations:

The first regards the committee minutes, starting with the the committee being referred to in its own minutes as both the Town Manager Search Advisory Committee and the Town Manager Search Committee. In addition, she had issues with dates for corrections, committee members present or absent, an accurate and sufficiently specific readable summary of discussions on each subject, and records of all votes and motions taken.

The second violation regarded voting by email.

Schleicher said in the complaint, "TMSAC chair Howley emailed TMSAC members on 6/4/18 to persuade members not to recommend a third candidate to Select Board (SB) as TMSAC decided on 6/1/18 and as SB voted on 6/11/18. This electronic communication amongst a quorum of TMSAC members constituted a private deliberation at an unposted meeting, and as such, is in violation of OML.

Schleicher asks for three things from the TMSAC: acknowledge the OML violations and describe corrective actions; redraft all TMSAC minutes including executive sessions; vacate violative 6/4/18 email vote and renotice/revote subject in properly posted meeting.

"As my late father once told me, if you see something wrong and you choose to do nothing to correct it, you become part of the problem and are complicit in it. Inaction is an action," said Schleicher.