Local Voice: EBEC Still Secretive and Defiant...What Else is New!

I attended the April meeting of the East Bay Energy Consortium yesterday with interest.  At the March 27th meeting of the Newport City Council, Councilor Napolitano was asked to disclose the nature of the Executive Meeting of EBEC that was held in February.   She declined, saying that she was not authorized to divulge that information.  Councilor Kate Leonard stated that the Newport City Council has a right to know what the concerns of EBEC are because of concerns about potential liability for the city.

Councilor Justin McLaughlin told Councilor Napolitano that when Newport holds an Executive Session, they describe the exact nature of the subject matter, and she needs to tell the EBEC Board that the Council wants more than just the word “litigation” when going into executive session. (He also said that EBEC has gone well beyond its original mandate.)

From "The Attorney General’s Guide to Open Government In Rhode Island 6th Edition":

If the matter to be discussed in executive session is one of public record, such as a pending court case or the negotiation of a well-publicized contract, the public body should identify and/or cite the case. Simply referring to “litigation” or “personnel” in this instance is not sufficient.

Councilor Napolitano was directed and agreed to  go back to her board and request permission to give information on the subject matter of the Executive Session.

At the end of the  meeting yesterday Ms. Napolitano reported to her board that she was asked by her Town Council to discuss what the EBEC board had discussed at their Executive Session meeting in February.  She told her board that she had refused to do so and had told her City Council members that she would have to go back to her EBEC board for permission.  She then made a motion to "unseal" the minutes of the recent Executive session (not a motion to divulge the subject matter of the meeting, which was what was requested).  There was no second.  She then stated that the motion "failed". (Actually, it did not fail, it just was not acted upon.) 

Two interesting points.  She did not explain to her board that the Newport City Council wanted to know the subject matter of the meeting and that did not necessarily require that the minutes be unsealed.  Second, it was quite obvious to the observers at the meeting that there had been some sort of "rolling  meeting" or conversation about this  issue beforehand.  All of the board members looked down at the table, and did not respond to the motion  even for conversation purposes.

So, what we have is a Newport City Council member openly defying a request from her fellow councilors to supply information on the subject matter of an EBEC Executive meeting and continuing to flagrantly defy the Open Meeting Laws.

What else is new??