Municipal
lawyers, papers disagree on Mass. access changes
A group of lawyers representing
cities and towns in Massachusetts want lawmakers there to back away
from changes meant to strengthen the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law,
while some newspapers think that the changes are not strong enough,
the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Mass., reported
The Massachusetts City
Solicitors and Town Counsel Association, made up of lawyers representing
the cities and towns, oppose almost every recommendation made by Massachusetts
lawmakers to promote greater transparency and public access in local
government.
But a June 26 editorial
in the Patriot Ledger criticizes the weak penalties outlined in the
legislation for open meeting violations. An editorial in The Boston
Globe on the same day also noted imperfections in the legislation.
The changes are part of
the Massachusetts legislature’s proposed state ethics reform
legislation, now awaiting the approval of Gov. Deval Patrick. The
association calls the proposed changes “problematic” and
“unworkable.”
The Patriot Ledger reported
that some of the changes include requiring local boards to announce
topics of closed sessions; provide minutes with a summary of all discussions
and a list of documents used at a public meeting; and post an agenda
listing topics that the chair expects will be discussed at a public
meeting.
The changes would apply
to town and city councils, boards of selectmen, and all other elected
and appointed government bodies.
The Patriot Ledger editorial
noted that the penalty for violating the Open Meeting Law by a government
body is only $1,000 and the legislation would increase the standard
of proof to require evidence that the violation was “intentional”
before the penalty was imposed.
According to the editorial,
intention is extremely difficult to prove in open meeting cases.
The Globe editorial said
the legislation doesn’t do enough to subject the legislature
or executive branches of government to the public records or open
meeting laws. The editorial said there is separate legislation on
Beacon Hill that might do so, however.
James Lampke, town counsel
for Hull, Mass. and executive director of the association of town
and city lawyers, told the Patriot Ledger that the requirements would
be too cumbersome for local boards, especially the smaller ones with
little or no staff.
Lampke said listing expected
topics before a meeting would be too problematic because many board
members don’t communicate before a meeting and would therefore
be prohibited from raising topics that they failed to announce to
the chairman.
Lampke said the association
does endorse a move to transfer responsibility for investigating alleged
Open Meeting Law violations from the local district attorney to the
state attorney general, to ensure better consistency, the Patriot
Ledger reported.
The Patriot Ledger
reported that several of the proposed open meeting provisions added
to the ethics legislation have been on the books in other states for
years.
Mass.
daily, 1st Amendment Center force release of files
The Patriot Ledger of Quincy
Mass., working with the New England First Amendment Center, based
at Northeastern University, has won release of physician statements
on 38 public employees from Quincy and Plymouth, Mass. who began receiving
disability pensions in the past five years.
The Patriot Ledger requested
the documents in October under the Massachusetts Public Records Law
from the Quincy and Plymouth retirement boards for those communities’
employees who began receiving the tax-free accidental disability pensions.
According
to the Patriot Ledger, an accidental disability retirement pension
pays 72 percent of the employee’s salary from the prior year,
tax-free, plus lifetime health insurance. An investigation by the
Patriot Ledger found that those pensions alone cost a total of $23
million for 26 communities south of Boston.
The Quincy and Plymouth
boards denied the request on the basis that identifying the doctors
would infringe on the retirees’ privacy rights.
The Ledger then
enlisted the help of the First Amendment Center and its director,
Walter Robinson, former editor of The Boston Globe’s investigative
Spotlight Team and a Northeastern journalism professor.
Jonathan
Albano, a member of the First Amendment Center’s board and a
partner at Boston-based law firm Bingham McCutchen, agreed to take
on the Patriot Ledger’s case pro bono.
The Patriot Ledger was
represented in court by Bingham McCutchen’s Carol Head, and
legal research and assistance was provided by James Bair and Laureli
Mallek, students from Northeastern’s School of Law.
Massachusetts
Superior Court Judge Janet Sanders ruled in April that the identities
of the doctors who approve accidental disability pensions are not
exempt from public records law, and she noted a “strong public
interest” in the case, the Patriot Ledger reported.
“Much of
the process by which disability pensions are awarded are shrouded
in secrecy,” Sanders wrote in her decision. “If some light
can be shed on the process by which those decisions are reached in
a way that does not impinge on individual privacy, then that will
promote public confidence — or lead to reform if problems are
revealed.”
Nashua
Telegraph wins libel suit from 1999 arrest story
Nearly a decade after the
original story was written, The Telegraph of Nashua, N.H., has won
a libel suit brought by a convicted criminal who was upset about police
comments published by the Telegraph.
Terry Thomas, a former
Nashua resident, brought the libel suit after Joshua Trudell, then
a Telegraph reporter and editor, wrote a story covering Thomas’
Oct. 29, 1999, arrest at a Hudson, N.H., apartment development after
a report from a resident there about a prowler. Thomas was convicted
two years later on three felony counts of receiving stolen property
and sentenced to 3-1/2 to seven years in prison.
Trudell used court records
and interviews with police officers from several communities to link
Thomas to 1,000 crimes in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, dating
to 1970.
Thomas
sued the Telegraph and the respective police departments and members
in 2003, saying the content of the story was incorrect and damaging
to his reputation.
The New Hampshire
Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Telegraph and the police June
25, upholding an earlier judgment made by Hillsborough County Superior
Court that said police had the “qualified privilege” to
comment on Thomas and his criminal history, and recognized the Telegraph’s
in-depth reporting while writing the story.
Named in the libel
suit were Trudell, Telegraph President Andrew Bickford, Publisher
Terrence Williams, and those quoted in Trudell’s story: Mike
Gosselin, a Hudson police officer; Roland Anderson, Weston, Mass.,
deputy police chief; Al Droney, a Needham, Mass., police detective;
Edith Flynn, a Northeastern University criminal justice professor,
according to the Telegraph.
Mass.
weekly denied tour of public high school site
The
Newton (Mass.) TAB has reported that a TAB reporter and photographer
were denied a tour of the Newton high school construction site by
construction officials even though the tour was posted on the public
notice board at Newton City Hall.
Newton Mayor David Cohen,
at least nine town aldermen, and members of the town’s Design
Review Committee were given a tour of the $197.5-million project June
24, the TAB reported.
“It’s
an essentially private event on private property,” Jeremy Solomon,
mayoral spokesman, told the TAB at the site. “It doesn’t
entitle the media to attend.”
According to the
TAB, the tour was advertised on the public notice board and posted
on the aldermen’s calendar. Solomon told the TAB that the tour
was organized as invitation-only because that is what the 
construction
company, Dimeo Construction, wanted. Turner Construction is one of
the other companies also working on the project.
In a June 9 letter to the
TAB, Francis Allard, Dimeo project executive, said that “construction
is an inherently dangerous business” and visitors could cause
safety distractions, the TAB reported.
Solomon told the TAB that
Dimeo and Turner officials have control over who comes on the site
because the contractors have responsibility for the site while construction is ongoing.
Greg Reibman,
publisher of the TAB and several of its GateHouse sister papers, told
the TAB: “It’s no secret that the TAB and Cohen administration
have had a rocky relationship. By repeatedly denying us a chance to
tour the project, the city was being both punitive and vindictive.”
“But
it’s not the TAB that is being punished. It’s the taxpayers
who are spending nearly $200 million on this project, and they deserve
to know how their dollars are being spent,” Reibman said.
According to the TAB, the
high school construction project was targeted to cost $141 million
by Mayor Cohen in January 2007. In a little more than a year, the
price rose to $154 million and then $187 million. The project was
capped at $197.5 million by Cohen in March 2008.
The TAB reported that construction
officials gave the news media, including the TAB, a tour of the site
June 25, but no photographers were allowed.
The TAB’s photo editor,
Jim Walker, told the paper that he has repeatedly asked to photograph
the site, but he has been refused because of safety concerns. According
to the TAB, the paper has been trying to photograph the site for one-and-a-half
years.
Lisle
Baker, president of the Newton Board of Aldermen, told that TAB that
the aldermen respect the owner’s wishes when visiting private
property.
“I think it’s
important that (the TAB) and the public see what’s going on
here,” Baker told the TAB. “It just has to be done with
contractors in control of the site.”
Walker said he would like
to take photos of the site because Dimeo’s official photos only
provide one view of the site.
“It’s our obligation
to provide oversight,” Walker told the TAB. “This is the
largest high school project in the state.”
Mayor Cohen told
a TAB reporter June 29 that photographs by the paper were “not
essential” for reporting on the progress of the construction.
Half
of N.E. states fail pols’ financial disclosure test
Half of New England’s
states failed a survey by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Public
Integrity that ranks the 50 states based on their standards for legislators’
financial disclosures.
Three New England states
failed the survey, earning scores of less than 60 points:
• Vermont was the
lowest state, with a score of 0 and tied for 48th place, which was
the lowest ranking because some states were tied. Vermont was ranked
48th in 2006 and 50th in 1999.
• New Hampshire was
ranked 46th with a score of 30, the same rank it had in 2006. New
Hampshire was ranked 44th in 1999.
• Maine had 53 points
and was ranked 41st among 50 states, a slight improvement over its
ranking of 42 in 2006. Maine was ranked 33rd in 1999.
Connecticut ranked the
highest of all the New England states, coming in 12th with 76 total
points. Connecticut was ranked 15th in 2006 and 13th in 1999.
Rhode Island was right
behind, tied for 13th place with a score of 75. Rhode Island was ranked
15th in 2006 and 13th in 1999.
Massachusetts was in 17th
place with a score of 73.5 points. Massachusetts was 13th in 2006
and 18th in 1999.
The center has ranked states
periodically since 1999 with a 43-question survey that measures public
access to information on legislators’ employment, investments,
personal finances, property holdings, and other activities outside
the legislature, Editor & Publisher reported.
The center also studies
state laws and disclosure forms to complete the survey and ranks the
answers on a scale of 0 to 100, with the highest degree of disclosure
being 100.
Louisiana was ranked first
with a score of 94.5 points. E&P reported that Louisiana’s
embarrassing ranking of 44th in 2006 led Gov. Bobby Jindal to push
a package of ethics laws that required lawmakers there to report all
outside financial interests — the first time that was required
in Louisiana.
The items
above were written, at least in part, from published reports by Jennifer
Skala and Jen Slothower, graduate students at the Northeastern University
School of Journalism and news staff coordinators for the Bulletin.
