Western Coventry Fire District Fined for Open Meetings Violation

The Western Coventry Fire District will pay a $1,000 fine for violating the state’s Open Meetings Act, the state Attorney General’s office announced Tuesday.

The fine is a settlement reached after the AG’s office looked into an open meetings complaint filed after the district failed to “timely file or post the unofficial minutes for its September 18, 2014 meeting on the Secretary of State’s website,” according to a release.

“While we are cognizant of the limited staff and resources of smaller public bodies, such as the Western Coventry Fire District, it does not take them off the hook for failure to comply with our open government laws. It is my hope and expectation that the Fire District will comply with the Open Meetings Act going forward,” said Attorney General Kilmartin.

The AG’s office filed an open government lawsuit in April against the district, leading to the $1,000 fine.

In June of 2014, the AG’s office found the district had failed to post minutes in a timely fashion seven times.

The AG did not find the district had wilfully violated the OMA then, but said that their finding last summer “served as notice that the conduct was unlawful and may serve as evidence of a willful or knowing violation in any similar future situation.”

The AG’s office issued a finding against the district in March after a complaint was filed (Novak v. Western Coventry Fire District) by Kent C. Novak, who alleged that the district was late to file minutes 11 times in 2014, including repeated instances after the June 2014 warning from the AG’s office.

The lawyer for the district, J. William W. Harsch, responded to the complaint by saying that the small and mainly volunteer district “does its best to meet transparency and public records request” and noted that minutes are the responsibility of a part-time clerk who is an elected officer, not an employee, and who works full time as the executive assistant to Coventry’s town manager.

Harsch downplayed the severity of the infractions and said that while the meeting minutes are ”important,” the complaint was a “procedural/technical matter of missing required filing dates for draft minutes.

In fact, for the specific violation mentioned in the lawsuit, the district was late in filing by just five days.

“The district once again urges Mr. Novak to utilize his available avenues. . .to communicate his concerns directly to the district in the first instance, reserving any further requests for assistance of your office for any instance where he believes, in good faith, that the district is disregarding such concerns.”

The AG’s office ruled that the continued violations of the OMA after the June 2014 warning showed the failure of posting the minutes in a timely fashion was “willful or knowing.”

The maximum penalty is $5,000.