 It's just here to give us a primer on the meeting law, something that we've had to commit to a year ago. And just hope that we can get to come down here. And now, here's the discussion on the open meeting law. Here's a short presentation of the contract. I hope there will be lots of questions. And there's a sign in the back of yourself with all my cookies. Sorry, I'm going to go over there right now. Hi, sorry to keep you waiting. Hi, sorry to keep you waiting. No? Yeah. It's fine. OK. It's good for us. So I hope so. OK. And there's also a sign-in sheet. I would just like to see if the show's got a sign-in sheet. If you haven't signed in yet, just your name, cam, and the position if you're just a resident. That's fine, too. It's only any kind of title, so that's what we're doing. Thank you very much. So something that I've been secretary of state since 2011. And I started this, what we call the transparency tour in 2011. And we do it every other year. And we do 12 to 15 stops each time, each year. We've done over 50 now. We do some for individual towns, some for regional areas. We do some for county boards or whatever. We try to make it simple. It's a small group, short presentation. What we can do is I'll take questions. By the way, Chris Winters is my deputy secretary. He's over here. He's my lawyer. But we've worked hard at trying to improve transparency in government over the open meeting lot. We have done our transparency tour. We also do the Public Records Act. How do we get public records? And what qualifies as a public record? So what I'll do is just, if you have a question, stop me. And I'll answer it or try to. I try not to get into specific issues, but kind of try to keep it general. We're not considered a legal source for answers, but we can explain how the law is written. So we'll just go from there and get started. So why are we here? We're here because of democracy, accountability, and openness. Key point to remember, the public has a right to know. Open meeting and public records laws protect us, protect our direct access to the decisions that affect us. And understanding these laws makes us all a better citizen. In government, the ultimate constitution, chapter 1, Article 6, that it says that all powers being originally inherent in and consequently derived from the people, therefore all officers of government, whether ladies, specifically the leaders of judiciary, are their trustees in service, and at all times in a legal way are accountable to them. And then you have one PSA 3-11 is the Declaration of Public Policy for the Open Meeting Policy for Public Records. What we're going to focus on is this one today. It's about public commissions, boards, councils, and other public agencies in the state exist to aid in the conduct of people's business and are accountable to them. So the sanctions are easy to find. They're very short, 310-314 is in the second of Title 1. We'll keep you all here. Who must apply? So the first question that we have to be talking about is public open meeting. Is it a public body of the state or the municipalities? And the statute says the state municipal boards, councils, and commissions, many committees and subcommittees of these bodies, not included are individual officials, councils satisfied by the governor exclusively for policy advice, the judicial branch, the public service board, which is considered a judicial type of system, and nonprofits generally. And I say generally on nonprofits because it really comes down to what's in their bylaws. For instance, a few years ago, there was a little to do with Vermont public television. And because some of their money flows from the Center for Public TV or whatever, their bylaws said that they had to comply with open meeting laws within their state. So they do have to follow it now. So it's not necessarily all nonprofits, but most. So when does the open meeting law apply? Any kind of forum of the board needs to hold the meeting. What's the forum? The forum is the majority of the entire public body. As I understand it, Bruce, you're a three-member select board, so that means two members are a forum. So anytime two members of the select board are together, they're considered a forum. There is something called MBSA 172, which is joint authority. When joint authority is given to three or more, the concurrence of the majority of such shall be sufficient and shall be required in its exercise. Essentially, what that's saying is you've got to have two votes to pass something. So you couldn't have, first of all, you can't have a meeting of one person and then have them vote to pass it. And they still need two votes. The same goes with three members who need two to pass. Does the Justice of the Peace have to be present before the meeting? The select board meetings? No. You know, a JP during the vote. Only the select board, but not a, okay. At any time you have a board or a commission, it still has to be a forum to transact any business. You have to have a forum of that board. So if you have a five-member board, it's free. If you have a three-member board, it's two, seven-member board, it would be four. I always thought even though whatever that number is, a Justice of the Peace has to be present. Do we have to witness? No. Not if it's okay. No, and then meeting the cabinet of the forum of a public body for the purpose of discussing business or taking action. So it's the business of the board. So if, and this, put it bluntly, if actually you could have all three members of the select board meeting at a coffee house, they just happen to show up there. As long as they're talking about the Red Sox or the Patriots or whatever, they're fine. But if they start talking about the budget, they're in trouble, unless they warned them. So it's the business of the public body. The public body's public functions, including any matter over which the public body has supervision, control, jurisdiction, or advisory power. So it's pretty simple. The forum can meet as long as they're not talking business. But if they want to talk about anything else, their vacations or whatever, they're fine. There's not a problem with that. So a meeting can occur regardless of the physical location. There's no exception for work sessions or retreats. We often hear people say, well, we had a work session. Therefore, we didn't have a formal meeting. There's no such thing as statutes as a work session or a retreat. They are considered meetings if you have a forum and you're discussing the business of the town. When I was, just to give you a quick background, I had 18 years on the South Burlington City Council, eight years in the State Senate, and then now almost 10 years as Secretary of State. When I was on the City Council at South Burlington, we used to annually have a, what we called a retreat, but we treated it as a public meeting. So we would warn it, we would post it, we would allow the public to come to that meeting, even though we were talking about strategies for the next year or whatever. We were looking at what did we want to accomplish. We would always publicize that meeting. And typically, we wouldn't get very many. Jayden? Yes. You have to allow the public to summation that meeting? Yeah, I think the statute is clear because it was changed a couple of years ago where you have to allow the public to participate in the meeting. That's one of the tenets of the open meeting law. Not only do they have a right to know and a right to participate. But that could be at the beginning of the meeting, at the end of the meeting, but that could be a number of separate towns that would be differently. City of Burlington does it all, right? I would argue that I'm not sure how the public would know what they want to say on the front if they haven't heard what's going to happen. But like in South Burlington, we would have the first public discussion on any item that's not on the agenda for that night. And then during the agenda as we worked our way through it, if people would raise their hands and we would allow them to speak. I will tell you that when we had our public meetings to discuss our budget, we had a $10 million operating budget at the time. And we'd have maybe two people show up from the public and they wouldn't say a word, just to get a watch. Then maybe three weeks later, we'd have a public meeting to discuss the leash law in South Burlington and we'd have a hundred, it wasn't going to cost a dime, 150 people would show up, 75 would be for it, 75 against it, and they all wanted to say something. So, you also have to be careful, this is the newest thing and this is mainly because of social media and emails. But the media can come together over a span of time. So you have to watch out for email strings and social media discussions. Now there was just, was it today, there was a story about Williams Town, Williams Town said to their select board, stay off of Facebook, even on the town website, because you can't get yourself into trouble. What about then Facebook or that the town has an account or doesn't thinking of having an account to celebrate community events. And then a second question I won't raise my hand again is meetings after the meeting adjourns, where there should be a social thing going on and what about this and what about this. So first let me say that there's nothing wrong with the town having a Facebook page to broadcast meetings, to broadcast events that are going on in the farmer's market, whatever, nothing wrong with that. But if all of a sudden it devolves, someone asks a question, hey Bruce Hyde, what about this issue? And then all of a sudden the rest of the select board starts chiming in, you've now got a de facto meeting going on. So you have to be careful about that kind of situation. The other situation, we actually had an example of that up in the Northeast Kingdom. I get this phone call from a reporter asking me, is it okay for the select board to adjourn their meeting and then start discussing the budget with the treasurer? And I said, well, it was a worn meeting? Yeah, but they'd already adjourned. I said, no, of course not. Now, I wasn't ready for the next day when across the top of the paper of the California record, it said, Secretary of State says illegal meeting. So I had to answer a lot of questions and then one of them was from the select board, Jared called me up and said, you don't understand. And I said, what didn't I understand? And he goes, we had already adjourned. I said, let me ask you a couple of quick questions. You had adjourned? Yes. Were you discussing town business? Yes. Did you have a quorum? Yes. Then you were in an illegal meeting doing that. And he again said, I didn't understand. So it really comes down to just being aware of your situation. It's not uncommon for a select board room, they might be having their meeting, they adjourn the meeting. And if they want to convince about a few things, go ahead. But if they start talking about town business after they've adjourned, that's a no-no. Just another quick question I wondered about. During the select board meeting, I know this might be obvious, but one of the concerns I have is are select board members, do they have any right to be texted? Sounds crazy. And who are we doing? But it's a concern of mine where, wherever they sit, they could be texting information to themselves and the group or the public isn't seeing what's really happening. It's a weird thing, but it's something I'm kind of concerned about. I would caution that select board to be very, very careful about that. Right, well I'm just saying. First of all, your texts are considered public records if they're talking about town business. Okay. So someone could demand to see what your texts were. And that's part of the right to know that the public has to participate. And if you've got select board members texting back and forth. Well, I don't think we should pass this or whatever. Well, it might be naïve to say too, oh, I didn't know I couldn't do it. Well. It's just like the guy I barely knew that said, oh, I'm sorry, I just didn't understand. Well, the next day, the next week, you would have answered 10,000 questions and he didn't, his ignorance didn't work. It's really, first of all, the folks that are honest like, we should know the laws, they should review these laws, they should review what the old meeting was about so that you understand them. But you also need to understand what public records are. And unless any record created by a governmental body is considered a public record, unless it has an exemption that prevents disclosure. So every record that the state government creates is considered public unless there's an exemption and there's a lot of exemptions, about 260 of the statutes that allow certain information, medical information, personal ID information, those kinds of things, but there's also a lot of other. I mean, I had, Chris and I were dealing with the VPR reporter about cyber security on our election system and he insisted that I give him the report from a test that we had done on our system. And I told him I wasn't gonna give it to him that I had an exemption that I could use. And I said, really, all you need to know is that we received a report and we've acted on it. And he said, but the public has a right to know. And I said, well, but the public also has a right not to have all the information in this particular instance. And I said, if I do give it to you, and the first thing I said to him was if I do give it to you, I might as well put it in the envelope and write on it Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin, and send it because the Russians are gonna get it. Jim, if I could just add on the text messaging, the fact that you're asking this question is why we recommend against it happening to me. So I could go give this to myself as a member of the school board. I might be texting my wife about am I gonna make it back in time for the soccer game, but no one out in the audience knows that. And it's kind of like they don't know who I'm texting, what I'm doing to be like passing notes during a meeting and the public is not privy to whatever conversation is happening up there. It's supposed to be out in the open with everybody able to hear what the conversation is. So even if it's innocent, it doesn't look that way to someone sitting in the public like you're distracting. Well, this brought out a question I thought of the year of one of your people, Jennie. She's your general counsel. Yeah. I had this big question yesterday and I don't mean to take too much time, but I asked her if select board members, including the town clerk, take the oath of office. In other words, they certify, whether before the American flag, that they are going to apply and hold still, hold true to the Vermont Constitution and probably the US Constitution. Both. Yeah, but I don't think many people think that I'm safe and realize they're under control. And that's, we won't get into details in the town, but I think some of the people might want to remember that they signed a certificate, whether they held their hand or not, that they are committed to the foundation of the Constitution. It's always an issue. If people are running for office, sitting there at town meeting day, then do we have a right as a bugger to ask them to commit to take open meeting on training? You can ask them. They can tell you yes and they can tell you no. In the case that the four of us have, the judge says she cannot order the select board to take the training, but if they agree to in writing, which was part of our settlement agreement, then we could, they would uphold the settlement agreement. It's just similar to what we're saying is, well, you agree to take the treatment, training. Yeah, so I don't know about that particular instance, but I can tell you that Bruce had contacted me when we saw each other somewhere. In the spring. He was in the spring and he had said to me, can we get you out to Grandville to have a presentation on the open meeting? Well, I said, sure, just let us know when. So. But that's all along here. Well, you know, I tried to get over our commission to the boards to attend to me, but we cannot. You can't force them. We cannot require our planning commission or our conservation commission or cemetery commission to come with us. I'm not saying that, when a person is running for select board, can we ask them to commit that they will take the train? Sure you can. All right, and then hold them to it. And then that's up to you to hold them to it? Yeah. So. Well, Bruce has told us to take the court. No, go to court. That's what we meant. That's why we, the four of us did. Oh, question on physical location. Say three select board members go to a work site for a culvert replacement. Does that have to be noticed? For a, say a culvert or a brokerage or a work with a contractor. So, you're kind of crossing it. We're going to kind of get into the different types of meetings, but whether it's a regular meeting, a special meeting or an emergency meeting. But let me just say that if a select board is going to meet, if a form of a select board is going to meet, I don't care if it's here or at a school or at someone's house or on a street corner. If there are three of them are meeting and they're talking about business of the town, then they probably should be, not probably, they must call an agenda and call it a special meeting. Now, we'll get into it a little bit, but the one caveat to that is, let's say there was a huge rainstorm that wiped out the culvert and the roads, you know, open. You can have an emergency meeting where you have to still notify the public that you're having the meeting, but you can meet on a very short notice. So we'll get into more about the meeting structure itself. Yes, ma'am. I'm a cemetery commissioner and during the summertime, we hold our meetings at the cemetery. It's a working meeting and I may, we have our regular meetings at the town hall, but I generally put up a notice that we're at a cemetery. That's fine, I'll give you a notice. Sometimes I forget to put the notice up, but nobody comes in like this. That's not, if you can't rely on that, as long as you're making an effort, that any time you've changed it, we'll talk more about the setting agendas and whatever. So a meeting does not include communications to schedule a meeting, organize an agenda, or distribute materials that will be discussed at the meeting. Or it doesn't include clerical work or staff work assignments, routine day-to-day administrative matters, no action is required, no money is appropriated, and site inspections to assess damage to make tax-accessible statements, quasi-judicial deliberations. Quasi-judicial, this will probably be more in your zoning board or planning commission, depending on how you set up. A meeting also does not include occasions when a formal public body attends a social gathering, a convention, a conference, a training program, press conferences, media events, or other, why a gathering, or otherwise, gets together, provided that the public body is not discussing the specific business of that body at the time of the exchange. And the participating members expect to be the business of the public body at a different meeting that's scheduled. A gathering of a formal public body at a newly-worn public meeting of another public body provided that the attending public body does not take action on its business. So if you had, let's say, the select board calls in the planning commission to discuss stuff with them, as long as it's being noticed that the planning commission is not taking action, they don't have to notice that they're coming to the meeting because it's going to be on your agenda. That was our question, let's say. That question. Okay. We're presenting zoning changes, and they're going to go to the select board on Monday night, and we were wondering if we needed to be a quorum then. You can have a quorum there, as long as the select board is put on their agenda, that the zoning board is coming in to present their changes to us, and you're not taking action on the zoning board on the zoning changes that night. It's a select board's meeting. Okay. But, Jim, do you think I'm already cutting and you're going to accept a check from somebody? Is that a meeting where two of us showed up, that should be quorumed? Yes, it would be not included. As long as you're not taking action. So here's the events, public notice, part of this law. There are three types of meetings, regular meetings, special meetings, and emergency. Regular meetings, that's what happens at the beginning of when the select board is sworn in after their election. They adopt the resolution or motion that they're going to meet at 7 p.m. at Town Hall on the first Monday of every month. So they need to post and make an agenda available 48 hours before each meeting. A special meeting where you only have to give 24 hours notice, is if any one of those pieces of that meeting from your regular agenda changes. So if you're meeting not on the first Monday but on the second Monday, or you're meeting instead of seven o'clock, you're meeting at 7.30, or you're meeting not at the Town Hall but at the barn down the street or something for whatever reason, then you would call a special meeting and it has to be worn 24 hours ahead of time. You have to notify any newspaper or radio station to serve your area. And any person who specifically asks some writing to be notified of special meetings, usually that's the press. And all members of the public body. And you wonder why is that? Because there have been cases where a select board, let's say a five member select board, they have three people who are for something and two that are not. And they call a special meeting and they only tell the two that are not. So they have the name. So you have to notify all members of the public body. And they also have a post-mortem agenda available 24 hours ahead of time. Emergency meetings, and this one gets confused sometimes. Only use when necessary to respond to unforeseen occurrences or conditions requiring immediate attention. You must get some public notice as soon as you can before the meeting. So, 2011, September, you remember this well? 2011, there were hundreds of emergency meetings going on throughout the state of Vermont after Hurricane Irene hit us. Those were emergency meetings. They were meeting at this culvert, at that bridge, at this washout, whatever it was, select boards were meeting all over the state, trying to get the handle of what was going on. We've had occasions where my old town before, since I left, they called an emergency meeting because they forgot to sign the contract on their Monday night meeting. So they called an emergency meeting for Friday morning. I called up the town manager and I said, well, that would actually be a special meeting and you certainly could have met the 24 hours. It said they were calling without telling anybody on an emergency basis. The other thing that I always try to explain to people is the first item on our agenda has always been, are there any changes to the agenda? Second item, does the public have any comment on anything or not on the agenda? So the first item, sometimes our town manager would say to us, I got to add two items to the agenda tonight that need to be discussed. So we would say, okay, he would hand out some documents and we would say we'll add it to the agenda after item number three, but we will not take action on it until we warn it on a meeting that we're gonna take action. So that the public has a right, because the public has a right to know, to attend and to participate. And it's very simple, the public has a right to know, to attend and participate. And you should not take an action on something that has not been warned for action at your select board meeting without the public knowing about it. Question? Yes. When you're warning these special or emergency meetings, does the warning that you're gonna pick up select board special meeting or is it just a regular meeting, a public sequence? No, I would call it a special meeting with the general select board's meeting to discuss whatever and the sector agenda, yes sir. Believe me, I have a fetical. That's some public notice. Suppose it's snowed at night. Suppose taking action is a matter of public safety. People could be hurt or worse. Do you wait till the next morning and put it on the bulletin boards? And maybe somebody doesn't make it because you did that. What do you do at night if it's an emergency and there's no communications, there's no radio stations on the air? Right. How do you handle that? So again, emergency meetings are only used when necessary to respond to unforeseen occurrences requiring immediate attention. You must get the public notice as soon as possible. Public notice could end up being an after, but at least you know why in public. I mean, let's say the town hall is on fire in the middle of the night. Exactly. What you're gonna be, as you said, before the meeting. Well, if you can do it before the meeting, that's the best, but you have to do it by the public that you should take an action. I mean, that is quite vague and I understand it needs to be, but I'm wondering, Bruce, I don't even know if maybe you have not said, like, 2011 for their minutes when everyone, like, when people were in the culprits and nobody had to send us a comment? Yeah. You've watched any since then. Oh, this is. I don't think it's, okay. It's very possible later that you can just enact him and then write him down, this is what we're gonna do. Yeah. And then get written down, but anyway. The requirements for the special meetings have written down the special meetings, but you don't have any of that written. He does have to, that's, I apologize, we took that for granted. This is also making it clear that you have to do it for special meetings as well. And special meetings, again, if anything, if you meet first Monday, 7 p.m. town hall, those three factors, if any one of those three changes for whatever reason, then you have to call it as a special meeting and warn it, but you have a special meeting that allows you to only have 24 hours notice on your agendas when you post it. I thought you were a boyfriend of yours. I don't know, it's just about the minutes, even during our meeting. We're gonna get to the meeting place. I'm just thinking they should have all been compiled and put into the proper minutes for, okay. There's actually nothing to say to that, but we'll get into that a little bit. Okay, agendas. Yes. Municipal locations in the town. Say it's not done. Is that an illegal meeting? I would suggest the town should be boasting it. I don't think there's, you could bring it up to a judge and if a judge said, yeah, they should have notified and they could, there's a point in this presentation where it says that a judge could void it a meeting if they thought are the actions of that meeting. See if they thought that the town didn't follow the process. But it's hard for me to say, I don't know the particulars in this particular, in what you're describing. I would say that you have to be, you're required by law to file it. Jim, I think it's important to reiterate agendas. This doesn't just apply to select boards. It applies to all boards. The Commission's Conservation, Life, Commission, Cemetery, school board. So post and make an agenda available 48 hours before each meeting by statute, what are the locations for that posting of an agenda? Well, the town court's office. And then designated. And designated wherever the other two locations are. And then website. And website if you have, if the town maintains, or has a designated website, we're supposed to post it. I just wanted to follow up on this gentleman's question. I'm saying you've forgotten to post. It was a serious mistake. Or as in your early example, an email thread that was about planning turned into a discussion. Like you've made a mistake. Is there a way to remedy it? Should you report it? Yes, work and come back and remedy. Okay. They can remedy. And publicly warned meeting that says they're going to take up the issue of a situation where they didn't follow the law. We haven't got that detail in here, but it's in the law. So as far as agendas, again, when at least 48 hours were raised, here we go, I did have a new idea. Where on the website of municipal public bodies only, so not all, Bruce, I want to make sure you understand there's only municipal public bodies that have to post their agendas in or near the town clerk's office and two other designated places. And anybody that has made a specific request. So if people have called up the town clerk, Kathy, and said, please notify me of any special meetings, then she would have an obligation to send an agenda to those people that have asked that you notify. What else? You should address specific topics to be discussed and potential actions. Any addition or deletion must be the first act of business at the meeting. So this goes back to what I said we used to do for years, which is, are there any changes to the agenda? And any other adjustment after that can be made during the meeting. But again, I would just caution anybody, any select board, not to take an action on something that wasn't warranted for action. Yes? About the request for the agenda from the town clerk, does that request have to be made annually or is it one time, to that's it? This one is annually, and then you have to re-ask it the next year. They have to ask it. Right, and actually the law is different. They didn't change that part of the matter. So the law says if someone puts, if John Smith says to you, I want to be notified of any special meeting from January to November, then it's for whatever time he notifies you for the rest of that calendar year. No, for calendar year. For calendar year. But if they notify you in December, then it's good for the next year. If they could ask a blanket, I want all the agendas all publicized. They could. Right. They could. Is that of the town clerk or the clerk of the select board or? It would depend on each town how they're set up. I think in many cases it is the town clerk that has the agenda in front of them, but I don't know how your account is set up as far as I go. Minutes, what are they? They give a true indication of the business of the meeting covering all topics and motions at a minimum, and this is, I want to be really clear about this. So at a minimum, you want to notice, you want to put in your minutes any motions, proposals or resolutions that were proposed, and what happened over the most results. And if there was a roll call for that vote, you want to put that in there as well. I think with three members it's hard to have a roll call. Jim, you know, it says all business. When you're having your dog age thing, you have 500 people show up, you don't have to say, John Smith said this, John. Actually that's a great question, because what we did and what you can do by law, if you look at what is actually in statute, this is all it says, but what you can do is say, we had half of the people in the room that wanted to speak, spoke against it, half of the people spoke for it, and then we went into what action we took. So we always had, when we would have a public hearing like that, we would have a sign up sheet, and we would attach that sign up sheet to the minutes to say, here's the people that attended and spoke at the meeting. Jim, the official document is that part of the minutes that are approved by that body. If the meeting is recorded, can that come back to that body and say, well, you missed this and that? Minutes are not verbatim. Minutes are supposed to be a reflection of the indication of meaning. And so if there was a whole section that was missed of something that you took action- Off the agenda. Off the agenda. Then you could avenge your agenda. You got to do your minutes. My understanding would be, if you had a bunch of people come in and said, you know, we've got a real clear problem on our road, we need to get it fixed, we would listen to that perhaps, may not put it in the meeting minutes for that, but add it to the next agenda, to the next meeting. Yeah, I mean, I guess, I don't think there's anything in the statute that would require that, to do that. I agree with the statute. Okay, let's bring it forward. The minutes shall include at least the following minimal information. So this is setting the lower bar here as to what's required for minutes. All members of the public body present, all other active participants in the meeting, all motions, proposals, and resolutions made, offered, and considered in what disposition is made of saying, and forth, the result of any votes with a record of the individual vote, each member, if a roll call is taken. That's all that's required. You can do that on one stage. Active participants. So that the public would say anyone from the public can spoke. So then, I should have probably 500 people to talk about the reach block. Listing them as present. Just very quickly, have you ever gone in and been to a meeting, and then you go read the minutes, and you go, oh, wait a second. So a lot of times, I haven't, but I have heard of that. Right, so sometimes the minutes are interpreted by the town clerk, if you read what the town clerk wrote, it would actually happen, and it's like, and then it gets into the newspaper, and you go, no, wait a second, that interpretation is no problem. The thing, and I want to be really cautious here. Minutes are not verbatim. Right. Minutes will not cover what every person that was there said. And we get calls all the time when people call us up and say, but they didn't write down what I said. That's okay. As long as they had the tenor of the discussion, it's okay. They don't have to write down what each and every person said. What they have to do is give you an occasion of the business of the meeting. So, people spoke for it, people spoke against it. You've attached a list of people who spoke, or who were active participants. That's what we did when we had the 150 people show up for the leash lock. We attached a list of people who signed in that night and said, these are the people that were in attendance. There was a strong segment that voted with it. We're in favor of the law. And there was a strong group that said they didn't like the law. And that's what we said. Even though it took us three hours of testimony, we had it down in like three sentences. Jim, just a little bit more about minutes. These minutes are the only record you will have 20 years from now. Right. The business of the meeting. So, you want them to be a true indication of what happened. These are the things that are archivaled and retained forever of all the documents that you have as a public body. So, it's really important that they are true and accurate and give a true reflection of the meeting. But that, again, it doesn't mean verbatim. And the only, you know, who gets to choose what isn't? The select board is the final arbiter. They're the ones that improve the minutes. So, someone can come and raise an issue and say, hey, this was not what was said or, you know, you need to correct this, but it's up to the select board to do that. And if the select board chooses not to, there's nobody that's going to say, of course you might have this though. No. It doesn't. No. But it's an addition. Right. What is the obligation of the board to provide additional information if asked about a specific point in the minutes? For example, it's almost always the Randolph-Herald who calls and says, hey, what exactly happened here a little more? And I always just invite that reporter to the next meeting. Am I obliged to give them more information than what goes into the minutes? No. The minutes are supposed to be a true indication of their board meeting. Yes. Usually there's a section for a public comment. If a member of the public raises a topic that is not included on the agenda, where your leash law issue was the reason for the agenda so you can group everybody's opinion under one, everybody's opinion under one, if a member of the public raises a topic that is not on the agenda, and that topic pertains to public property, municipal property, traffic and safety on a public right of way in the town, I believe that that should be included in the minutes or at least perhaps the select board answer should be, thank you very much, we'll note it, we'll put it on our next agenda. So public comment period, we made a handle when people would raise a public comment in that period for items not on the agenda, we would hear what they wanted to say, but we wouldn't react to it. We would, as I think Bruce said, put it on to the next agenda perhaps or a future agenda coming up, depending on timing. Should it be included in the minutes that it's raised if it relates to a municipal issue? I mean, I would, but I don't, there's nothing concrete about that in the law, but we would say, you know, so-and-so raise this issue, we'll take it up at a future meeting. Like for example, maybe this is an example, my husband and I would stop, would go to select board meetings and just go to the public forum to make a comment. And we would, at one point, we wrote a letter to the select board that we submitted during those public comments that contents of that letter were not in the minutes, but the fact that we spoke, and what we spoke on was just in the public forum. Like they were here to speak about and they spoke about this to us. Well, in that particular sense, we submitted a letter, that letter would be a public record. Yes. So someone would have that in the town offices. What's up? When minutes have to be posted, no later than five calendar days after the meeting, and I want to be really clear, that part of the law hasn't changed in over 30 years. What did change about five years ago, I think it was, probably more than that. Yeah, maybe seven years ago, was that they should be, they need to be made available for inspection and copying upon request within that five day period. But now they added a legislature added, posted to a website that the public body maintains or designates. So, they felt, there was a lot of select boards out there who were not posting their minutes. Or the last seven minutes that we posted were, you know, January of 2018. And here we are in September of 2019. So, what the legislature said is if you maintain a website, you need to post them within five days. So the five calendar days is the same as it's been for 30 years. Now, I'm going to be the first one to tell you that not every county has followed that. But I would also be the first one to tell you that based on what the minutes are supposed to have, there's no reason why a select board can't put together a one-pager and just say, there are three members of the select board were here. We had five people attend the meeting. There were no resolutions or motions taken other than to adjourn and just have it and then they can update the minutes at a later date. But the minutes are, and Chris said it, the minutes are the history of your board. When you post those minutes, they're draft minutes. I don't think there's anything in the law that says draft minutes have to be approved by the body of the Iran. They don't, but draft one minutes. So if you leave the draft, first of all, if you have draft minutes, I would say make sure it's clear on there that they're draft. And then the law was, I don't know if I would want to call it. What was it, Chris? It wasn't really amended. It was just, it was added to it that said that you can place your draft minutes with your permanent minutes once they're approved. If you post draft minutes and you realize that there is an error in those draft minutes, can you take them down and repost other draft minutes? Yes. Okay. And the first draft minutes would go away. The first draft minutes would go away. Okay. Do you have to make note of that change? Well, you're probably going to keep that in the file, but it's not like you would, the draft minutes essentially go away once you have permanent minutes. I can tell you that the documents that Chris and I, we draft and redraft and whatever we have a file in our computers, but. Quick question, Jim. Town hall meeting day. Each article, are there specific minutes to each one of the articles presented at the town hall meeting day? In other words. Well, the town meeting is a completely different animal from your regular meetings. Okay, that's my question. But does the town clerk take minutes at the? I don't know. In your town, does the town clerk take the minutes at the town meeting? Is that a responsibility of the town clerk, or is that just? It's a responsibility of the clerk of the board, whoever the clerk of the board is, and they may designate the town clerk to take those minutes. They also might like in South Florida when I was there, we had a specific person who would, a woman who was retired that came in and would take the minutes, record it and take the minutes so that she could write them up. I thought the discussion to the town clerk, regardless, was the clerk of the board. It was required to take the annual minutes. I don't. I'm not positive about that. That may be, in a lot of towns, the town clerk does take the minutes, but I'm speaking about minutes of the regular meeting. I'm not talking about town hall or town meeting day. I'm talking about the regular minutes. Yeah, no, I realize that, but it's just a bigger question for town hall meeting day, and I was just curious if the town clerk's responsible for taking minutes per article or per conversation as they go down the articles. Article number one, does she or he make notes and take minutes of people? Well, I would assume that she would be keeping minutes based on if she, whether it's the town clerk or anybody else, that they would take minutes based on the each article that comes up. Okay. So you would have some kind of a description of what happened for that article, including the vote. Okay. Kathy, is that what you do? Yeah. Thank you. Hi, I just want to have a clarification. So your commission meets and then you post draft minutes. Is it the draft minutes have to be, no later than five minutes? In the statutes about draft. Okay, so they can just be finalized. They can be your final minutes. Final minutes are not final until they're approved by the body. Okay. So up to that point, they would be draft, but. They're by the body until they say it was planned. All right, so when the planning commission approves them. We've had some time, we've had somebody take minutes and then read the minutes back to us at the end of the meeting. We say sounds great as opposed to has been. Yeah. Let me give you a really good example. This happened to me when I was city council chair. We had a city manager and when we went into executive session to discuss his evaluation, we always would leave the town hall part of the meeting and go up to his office and close the door. In the second session, we discussed his evaluation and we discussed his benefits. Generally what would happen is the city manager, if we were going to take an action, we would go back down to the town hall, to the public meeting. Usually there'd be nobody there. Because we always did our executive session at the end of the meeting. And we went downstairs and went back to the meeting room. And came out of the executive session. I had took a motion to approve his evaluation and certain benefits. And the town manager would take the agenda because at that point our clerk who would take the minutes had already left. He would take the agenda, turn it over and write any actions that we took once we came out of the executive session. About five years later, I had retired. Or the other four, we had a whole new city council. The city manager retired. And about two years after he retired, the new city manager and the new select, the city council, said they couldn't find anything in the minutes that approved his benefits that we gave him. So they started, this was recorded in the free press. So they tried to take those benefits away. So they had a public meeting. Four of the five of us that were on the council at the time showed up. We said, look, we don't know why they're not in the minutes but we took that action and you should honor that. Make a long story short, he went to court but then he eventually got his benefits. The fact of the matter was we screwed up because we didn't get the minutes right. But we also didn't approve our minutes necessarily. We would have draft minutes and we might, if our meetings went really, we used to meet twice a month and our meetings could go till 12 o'clock, one o'clock in the morning sometimes. And we'd be tired and we'd just say, we'll deal with the minutes next meeting. Nobody thought to go back and check really, did we get everything? We'd read them quick. Yep, they sound right. And off we go. Minutes are important. They're the history of your board. They're the permanent history of your board. Get them right. So make sure that someone's looking at them and getting them right. When can the board meet in private? Which is normally called executive session. So what is it? It's a closed portion of the meeting. There's no more public involved. When is it appropriate? Only if the business to be considered fits into one of the 14 categories and only if the public body moves to enter from an open meeting. So we hear this often where a town normally has their select board meeting at seven o'clock. And they post the meeting that they're gonna have their, they're gonna go into executive session at 6.30 and then their public meeting at seven. They have to go into the public meeting first before they can go into executive session. Keep that in mind. You have to be in an open meeting and then take a motion and indicate what reason why you're going into executive session. And it can only be for talk, not action with the exception of one thing, real estate options. If you're going into fire someone from the city or the town's staff, you can't do it in executive session. You can discuss it, but then you have to come out of the meeting and actually have a public motion to do that. Of course, those in the executive session have to select board meeting. They have to state the people that are there, the reason for the executive session. We'll get into that a little more. And they can't sign anything or... Not in the executive session. Unless it's a real estate option. That's the only reason. You can go in, let's say you're having a lawsuit against you, you can go into executive session to discuss with you, you can ask your attorney to come with you and have discussions about strategy or what you wanna do, but you can't actually take an action until you come out. So, and in that case, you wouldn't. But if you go in and the... Let's see, if you go into executive session and your attorney has an agreement to settle a case, you can't sign it in the executive session. That has to be done with an emotion to sign it, whether it's the motion to allow the select board chair to sign the agreement or whether all three members of the select board have to sign it. We have to take place, like a meeting, a select board meeting? Well, you go back and open the session. Open the session. You come out of the executive session and then go into open session. You exit, you exit the executive session. Everybody's got home because the executive session is not open. Well, that's why you shouldn't let people know. Well, we used to say to people when we were going out of the executive session, the only action we might take is tax, a sign in an agreement. The amount of executive session is there's no one there. Do you... What do you mean? Okay, you guys go up to select board. Well, the select board goes up into executive session and you come down to bring it to the public. Well, everyone will know. What happens with the decision announced when it went on? It's still public. It's still public session. It's still public. It's still public. Go us into the next... No, it would be part of that meeting. So the executive session is not necessarily, like we used to say, the only action we'll take is this or the understanding that we're gonna go into the executive session to discuss some strategy and then we're coming out and we'll adjourn for the next. What happens if there's an objection to the decision of the executive session? There is no decision made in the executive session. You can't make the decision in the executive session. All you can do is, the only decision you can make in the executive session is to come out of the executive session. Right, but then you have a motion when you come out of the executive session and if the public doesn't agree with that motion, it's made tough luck. Well, yeah. That's what I mean. It's tough luck. Yeah, if the public doesn't agree with it, they should have stayed. And the public... Oh, so, the wraps, oh, that's a good... So, I mean, I don't know how it's done here. The meeting's not over. But it is. The meeting is not over because they went into the executive session. Right, the public has a right to stay there waiting. The public has a right to stay. And it might be, I mean, I don't know if you hold your executive sessions right here. This is a different task, too, gentlemen. Yeah. The public doesn't have a right to know what went on in that executive session either. No, they don't have a right to know what is above. But if you come out of the executive session to take an action, the public has a right to hear or understand what went back in. You voted three to two to take this action? Well, what happens in the executive session is if it's a done deal, does the public still have the opportunity to... You, the public has no way to know anything that happened in the... No, not in the... You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? No minutes, nothing. Okay, it's totally propped. I get it. It's a vacuum. So just, you guys, you know, you work with a collaborator and then you come out. And it's 10.30 at night. And the subject matter that you were discussing, you've made a decision in the room 10 because it is a minute. But tough luck for the citizenry if they weren't there to object. I don't like to use the word tough luck, but yeah, they adjourned that meeting. Executive session could be at the beginning, it could be in the middle, it could be at the end. But if they still, even if it's at the end, they have to come back into open session to adjourn the meeting. Wow. I wonder how many things get done about it. Well, it depends on, I mean, I don't know how... I have no idea and I'm not gonna say how they do their meetings here. I know we used to do ours at the end of the meeting. And then we would actually say as we were going into executive session, we would have the motion to go into executive session to discuss the IMZ. And the understanding is that the only action we will take is to adjourn the meeting. Or we possibly could sign a contract when we come out. So we let the public know that before we go into executive session, that we might take an action or we might not take an action. Wow. But there are 14 statutory categories that those... Let me get to them. So, some of the permissible reasons for going into executive session are that there's a specific planning. For instance, the premature public college would clearly place the public body or a person involved at a substantial disadvantage. And that is specifically about contracts, labor, relations agreements in the ununion, arbitration or mediation grievances, potential or probable civil litigation and prosecution of which the public body may be a party, and then confidential attorney clients, communications, that's just part of it. There's another page here that has other ones. But with these, with these, it was a premature public body or a person involved at a disadvantage. For instance, labor relations agreements, if you haven't, I don't think you guys have the labor union in here, but in South Carolina, we have labor unions. We have police union, fire union, public works union. So we'd be discussing the contract. So the contract and labor relations agreements, we could go into executive session to have those discussions, but we could not sign them in that meeting, executive session. We had to come out in an open meeting and do it in an open session. If you're being sued, I remember one time we went into executive session and we asked our attorney to come in with us, and it was a zoning issue. And this attorney sits in front of a five-member council and he says, I've got good news and bad news. And I said, all right, what's the good news? He goes, the good news, we can fight this case two ways. I said, what's the bad news? He says, we're going to lose both. And I looked up and down the city council and I just said, unless I hear an objection, please go settle this whatever way you can. The point is you go into executive session with your attorney to discuss communications and perhaps strategies or how you're going to fight a lawsuit, how you're going to deal with it. That's permissible. The other permissible reasons are negotiating or securing real estate purchase options, which is, again, the only thing you can actually take an action in private. Repoint it, point it, devaluation, discipline or dismissal of a public officer or employee, suit academic records, exempt public records from a public record act. So if there's a discussion to be had because someone has requested a specific public records, you can go into executive session if there are specific exemptions that prevent disclosure. Clear unit, parallel to public safety. Let's say there's a dam up the hill and it's about the breach, but you don't want the public to know yet until you've got a strategy on how you're going to deal with it. You could withhold that information until you have a strategy. That's a poor example, but it's an example. I don't know if there's a dam up above. And then municipal, this is the newest one, is municipal or school security or emergency response measures. After some of the mass shootings that were occurring, we were, there was a lot of requests of schools and towns for their emergency response plans and whatever. You don't want to give all that information out because you don't want the bad guys who might get ahold of it to know how to get in. So these are the, these plus, these are the only reasons you can go into executive session. And if you can't go, if you go into executive session, let's say you discuss labor relations agreement and that's all you stated in your motion, you can't all of a sudden start talking about the evaluation of the town manager because you didn't say so up front. You would have to come out, make another motion and then go back in. So it's only what you specify in your motion that you can discuss. And so you can bring anybody you want into that meeting. And you can, the select board can add anybody that they can say I want the town clerk, our attorney, public works guy, whoever it is that they need to come into that meeting, into that executive session. They can request anybody. Can it be a citizen? It could be a citizen if it's pertinent. Yeah, okay. If it's pertinent. But it's also confidential. It's also a very confidential meeting. So the latest thing that we've got is meetings by electronic meetings. So things have changed. It used to be that an electronic means was a telephone, but now you can do Skype and all these other things. A member participating remotely must first identify him or herself when the meeting starts and be able to hear everything that's going on in the meeting and to be heard throughout the meeting. And if a quorum or more, so let's just say in your case, there was two select board members who were gonna be out of town, but one is still here. They can still meet. The agenda must designate a physical location where the public can attend and participate. And where one member were designated must be physically present. So it could be that you say the town clerk will be at city hall to man the computer or whatever for this meeting. We had this happen to us right after Act 68, for if you might remember. So Act 60, actually Act 60, not 68, Act 60 in the School of Funding Law back in 1998. There was a time period where after a certain date and it was July 1st that any agreements between municipalities and businesses or whatever to state, attack stabilization agreements that had to be in place by July 1st of 1998. South Burlington is the host of Burlington International Airport, but it's owned by the city of Burlington. And we had a tax stabilization agreement with them for every 10 years. Basically they say, we think it's worth this, we think it's worth this. They filed a court, then we agree to a tax stabilization agreement. We were due to have one, but we were four of the five of us, or three of the five of us were gonna be out of state on vacation or at meetings or whatever. We called in, but we had the meeting scheduled so the town manager set up a speakerphone where the three of us called in on a conference call. The other two were there with this town manager and we actually had a member or two of the public as well as a member of the press there to listen to the meeting. This was all before this was available, but we were doing it back then. And the whole idea is that the public, again, has a right to know, a right to attend, and a right to participate. That's what you gotta keep in mind. Any vote, not unanimous, must be taken by roll call so you know how everybody voted. If you have a two to one vote, do you have to say these two vote are part of the committee's vote? No, but if you're doing an electronic. If you're doing an electronic, or if it's not clear who voted for what, and let's say you and Schleck were choosing, well, the vote passes two to one, someone in the public might say, well, wait a minute, I didn't hear two votes. And I asked them to have a roll or whatever. But roll call for three members is not bad. Right, but if you just put in a minute, I don't believe that it was a two to one vote. Motion carries. Yes. You don't have to say it was the one. Most people will know. So again, public participation, this is key to all open meeting law. That's what it's about. You have a right to attend, to obtain a meeting agenda in advance, to be notified directly of upcoming special meetings, to have disability accommodations if necessary, pursuant to Vermont safety discrimination statutes. You have the right to participate in a reasonable opportunity and stress the opinions on matters being considered. And basically it's enforced the law. So why comply? Meetings held without respect, respecting the details of the law may be considered illegal. And the courts may regard any actions taken in those meetings as voidable. More importantly, illegal meetings do offend our notions of openness, accountability, and our democracy. And to Vermont, the people rule sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, who are elected or appointed representatives, but always with the benefit of public scrutiny. Again, you follow me up on why comply. The following people can be charged with misdemeanor and fine. A member of the public body knowingly, they really made this very clear now. They remember the public body knowingly and intentionally violates the open meeting law. A person who knowingly and intentionally violates the open meeting law on behalf of a member of the public. And a person who knowingly and intentionally participates in the logical exclusion of a person from the meeting. So those people can be charged. The Attorney General already agreed that the individual can wring a lawsuit in court asking for injunctive relief to stop a specific behavior for a declaratory judgment and a binding termination of what the rights were. And the law was changed to include attorney's fees, which you have to win substantially in order to get your attorney's fees. So if a member of the public were to sue, they select for it and substantially wins. In the court decision that they made, they could be awarded their attorney's fees. But it doesn't work the other way. But it doesn't work the other way. The burden's on the government. Enforcement, written notice of the public body by the agreed and individual or Attorney General, alleging that there had been specific violation and requesting a specific cure. The public body's public response within 10 calendar days, acknowledging that the violations did occur and stating an intent to cure it or stating that they don't consider it a violation. The public body's fury of activity. If the public body acknowledges violation must be within 14 calendar days of the public response, either ratifying or declaring a void in the action taken and adopting specific measures that actually prevent a future violations and the agreed individual's recourse of unsatisfying is to follow a pilot and lawsuit and superior court within one year of time to the meeting. That's it. I didn't go over public records, but I did have a couple of questions about public records. Say there's public records that are missing, that you go to the town and you ask for a certain public record and it's just not there. What is the recourse for the member of the public? Not much. Unless you prove that they willfully destroy them. Okay. I mean, is it either available or it's not? Okay. What if they were once there and now they're not? Well, again, I can't answer because I don't know what happened or what was the reason that they disappeared. If it could be that they just got mixed up, they might turn up with another file at a later date. It could be that it was a burden. And what is your opinion of a town having a website? Personally, I think all towns have a website. Okay. But there's expense and time in doing that. Jim, do you have any instances where you're kind of taking that to the side? Yes. But not in the files, do you? Yeah, there have been, Montgomery is one town that did that. They actually threatened to do it. When the five day rule went in, but we sort of explained to them that the five day rule has always existed. It was just that now you had to post it on your website. And you know, I get it back in 20 years ago when websites first started to happen, there were basic websites. Think back, I think actually uploading documents and stuff to an email. Sometimes it would take 15 minutes to upload a document and then send it, and then it would take another 10 minutes. I get it. But today, the way our systems work, it's basically point click and off it goes. Well now we have AC5, might even be faster. So, yes sir. In a safety looking for records, I just, I listened to TV the other night, there was a guy that wanted video from Burlington there that wanted a case. I was, I participated in that case. Go ahead, I was on the winning side. Required you to pay for them to find records. And if they can't find records, how long can they go not looking for them or saying they can't find them, be it is there a specific time period where they have to say we just don't have them? So, I'm looking over at Chris because we get this all the time, but essentially if someone requests records of a town, of a government, you are supposed to produce those records promptly. There's no thing about what is promptly. However, there is another provision in the statute that says that a government agency has three days to deny a request. And they have to do it in writing, it didn't used to be, but now they have to do it in writing and they have to explain why in writing and what your appeal process is. Is there a request about to be applied? No. Not necessarily, it really is, if the town has taken, I would say no, but there are cases where towns or government agencies have said that any request has to be in writing, but it's a policy. As long as everybody's treated the same, but I could write it on the back of a piece of cardboard and say, Kathy, I need these documents or I can call you up and say it. So it really depends on each town how they set it up. I don't believe that, I think if you get a request that is lengthy or looks for a lot of documents or is something you're gonna have to go search for, I mean really search for, they may not be here, they might be stored in some place else. I think then you have a right to say, one, can we try to reduce what it is that you're looking, what is it that you're actually looking for? Cause maybe I can find that quicker, but if someone gives you a very broad request and says, I want all of these records pertaining to this issue and you can ask them to reduce it down to what they're really looking for, so you have that ability. That didn't used to be in the law, but it is now where you can negotiate basically over what it is that the person's looking for. But again, we will only ask someone, like we have a couple of what we call frequent fliers and we will tell them that, cause they'll give us a long list of stuff they want. And we'll say, look, we don't wanna miss anything, so please put it in writing to us that we'll be more than happy to meet your requirements. So if a town can't produce the records to get back to my original question, can they charge you an hourly rate for somebody to work for? If they can't produce. Or, well, what do you think, Chris? So the law says that you can charge for a time over 30 minutes in complying with the request for records. Now it's really unfortunate if a state agency or a town doesn't have their records management. Well, it sounds like, and you're right, the individual is being charged for, so the town can get their records back. Well, why should somebody have to pay? I don't disagree with you that. Why should somebody have to pay for somebody to find records that should be there or declared on fine? So going to the particular case you were talking about, so that was a videotape, a police videotape, and a citizen had to witness what had occurred and he wanted to view the tape to see if he got it right, and he was not a party to it, but he wanted to view the tape. The police department in the city of Burlington said, well, we have to produce a copy. He asked to just look at it, the inspector, and the law makes it a distinction between the inspection and the actual copy. The town said we have to make a copy so that we can redact juveniles, faces, and things like that out of it. And it's gonna cost you $700 to get the look at this tape. So he took it to court. The ACLU took the case for it. And then what happened was I also filed an amicus on behalf of the ACLU and this individual, saying the law is clear that if you want to inspect records, you don't have to pay to see to inspect, you only have to pay if you want to. The meetings were going on, sorry. Can we, can we please keep a quiet for a minute? So the court ruled that we were right, that the town can't charge for inspection of records, which is what we held for a long time. So basically if somebody asked to see some records, and the town goes, well... If you want to inspect records is one thing, but if you want a copy of a record, that's another. Correct. I mean, and this is the argument is about records management and proper records management. And unfortunately what happens is the citizenry ends up getting the short end of the stick because, and I don't mean the towns of general government in general, but government doesn't do as good a job managing their records to keep them in order to make it easy, ED5. Well, I mean, it sounds like justice goes to the high pit. You know, if you've got a pay to see public records. We hope it doesn't. That's our goal is to make sure that doesn't happen. But let me give you an example, ED5 of the JP, there was, Vermont Digger was requesting all kinds of records on it. At one point they were told, if you want to see copies of these records, it's going to cost you $200,000. Vermont Digger wasn't at $200,000, just lying around. And I sided with Vermont Digger and said, no, you asked to see the records. You didn't have the copies of them. And then I was, they were told, well, we have a lot of work that we have to do to pull those emails out. Well, it just so happens that I had four or five dozen emails about ED5 that came to my email. And I had them in five minutes, put them on a thumb drive and handed it to the press. I also got told that I shouldn't do that. And I said, by the Attorney General's office. And I said, well, you're not my attorney on this one. So anyway. My question, whoops. No, go ahead. You're first. Okay, my question is, what else is this applied to? We've talked about select boards and local government planning. Cemetery commissions, planning boards, owning boards. What about municipal? What about planning districts? Regional planning. Regional planning. Yep. Anything that's a state constitution or any of the subdivisions. So if the state statutes, I don't know what it was, if the state statute and actually order a commission or a subcommittee, in the city of Burlington, they have a 14 member city council. They have finance committees, so three. They have another committee of three. They didn't use to consider, they thought those were off limits. They've since learned that those have to have minutes and those have to have forums. They have to follow the old committee line. So any committee, subcommittee, commission? Let me give you an example of something that's got people in my town going. We have a group that is a committee of the regional planning district. Yep. That group has a, something the voters will vote on and their campaigning for it. They hired a PR guy hired for the dollar. And they set up a not advertised meeting that was a, what do you call it? It was the invitation only focus group. And members of that committee went to it, but they made sure they didn't have a quorum of that group voters. So they said it didn't have to be an open meeting. So it doesn't matter if it's a quorum of the regional planning group, it's what is the constitution of that commission or whatever it was called. So if they have a committee that's set up that they have, that was set up with 12 members or let me say 11 members, then six would be the quorum. And it doesn't mean a quorum of the board. It's a quorum of the committee. Of the committee, yes, and that's what they did. They made sure that it was not a quorum of the committee. Then they can't, if they don't have a quorum of the committee, they can't take any actions. You're right. They could have discussions, but they can't take any action. Okay, my seat. Oh, I'm sorry, you had your hand up first. Yeah, I thought Chris could help with this. Okay, the safekeeping of town minutes, real or seen, missing, nine months go by. Just don't, just camera, it's the liability of the select board to give a call to the committee. We just don't have these. We just want to make it legit that we're done lucky, I didn't see the county sheriff in that list. So it's your question, what's the remedy? What's the accountability? The town is the custodian. It's the official custodian, it's their responsibility. We have a state archives and records administration division. We have a state archivist who works with all the towns on record schedules and how to handle, preserve all the friends. The safety needs to be kept for how long? About a month. Now there will be times when records are missing. It's unfortunate, but it happens. Well, it's unfortunate, but what is the public expectations of having it finalized that they're just missing? Well, first of all, I would certainly hope that the minutes don't show up missing. And I would think that the minutes, even if the actual minutes showed up as missing, there must be a record someplace. But, you know, it's... Well, how would someone into the town hall and stole a piece of... How would someone into the town hall and stole a piece of historic artwork? And the town, the two people can't find it. People call the police because it's a... Well, yeah, and that could be, yeah. What's the difference between the records that are missing again? Well, there is a remedy. You can go to court for the town records. Yeah. It's just... But the... I don't know that... I've never heard of a town not having their records. I've heard them that they're misplaced or whatever, but I think that, you know, a town that would willfully destroy their minutes. Boy, I've never heard of that. And that would be something that's charging them. Yeah, that would certainly be something that's charging them. I think it would be open meeting. Same particular town as a... Commissions. Could be any commission, planning of conservation. In that particular... And they're all appointed by the select board, the members of the commission. And the commissions aren't abide by open meeting law, by the mice, like, posting correctly. Who would you go to complain to? Would you go to the select board to make your... You would? And second... Well, first I would go to the planning commission. Let's say it's a planning commission. I would go to the planning commission and say, you're not following the open meeting law. And then it's up to them to say yes or no. And if you didn't like what they said to you, you could then go to the select board and complain to the select board that the planning commission was following the open meeting law. But really, the town's select board is independently elected. Are you appointed or elected? The town clerk is elected independently of anybody else. So, I'm independently elected. The governor can't tell me what to do. And I remind him that I got more votes than he did. I didn't know that. What did you do to the commission? Yeah, I mean, the select board is responsible for appointing the members of the commissions and boards in its town. Whether it's a cemetery commission... Well, reinforcing it. They come and complain to the select board and I say, hey, listen, I know the open meeting law. I, you know, they're not keep posting. I understand what you're doing. You try it or you check it. It's called town meeting, maybe. Right. I mean, really, it comes down to the actions of the people. The votes of the people are who controls the select board. And I don't know if your planning commission, sometimes their planning commission or zoning board are also elected, but most cases they're appointed by the select board. So the select board has responsibility over those boards and commissions. And if they're not following the law, the select board needs to step up. And if they don't step up, you can go to town meeting and... Or file a complaint. Well, you can file a complaint if they're violating the law. And second, would that be a topic raised? Would that be able to constitute as being a topic? As a topic. And an active participant. You mean at the end of the meeting? Yeah. On the agenda. You could raise it under the public comment period. You could ask that the select board add it to their agenda for a future meeting to take action on it. But it's... Should it go in the minutes that a member of the public is complaining about the meeting? Well, it's not allowed. I would hope so. I would hope so. Okay. That's good. I do have a quick week. Subcommittees, are they responsible? There was some conversation about subcommittees. Like say there's a budget committee or... Yes. They have to do minutes and all that, okay? And a vault research. I go in, I wanna go in the vault and look at stuff. Do I be charged by the hour to go in and just... Depends on each town and what the town clerk's fees are set up. Okay. And non-profits. And most realtor's and lawyers pay a vault fee. Okay. Non-profits. You mentioned that they don't have to follow meeting minutes and all that, but I know you have a database on your webpage for all businesses and then domestic non-profits come up. You mentioned them having charges of bylaws. Would they be filed with a state? Okay. Where would they be filed or would they be filed then? You would have to ask them for it. Okay. Thank you. So, we are working with the legislature on creating the Board of Commission's website, but that's kind of a different animal. It's, right now it's not in existence, technically. But what you're asking about, is we don't keep the bylaws for the non-profits. So, if you ask to see select board meeting minutes, just to see them. You can't be charged. It's possible. That's what we think. And there's a Supreme Court decision that agrees with that. Is that kind of a camp? What's that? If you ask to see select board meeting minutes, can you be charged? Who the time takes to find those? If you want a copy of it, yes. Okay. You just want to look at a book or something. You can do it as you know. Okay. That's all I need. There should be no charge for inspecting reference. So, you can hang out the hall all day. Just keep reading. Town clerks call us, or something special. I'll hang up for a second. The guy next to him will be the last section. I'm also an auditor and chair. Good for you. And we audit our initial meeting, which are just done this week. And when we hold our meetings, we decide when the next one is going to be at that meeting, so we have a running warning, so to speak. We also take notes on what we've done that evening. We take, if I take notes, if I also take down who was there, who was present, and what we say we did, billing for taxes tonight. And that's what we did, we worked on billing for taxes. Is that running journal, okay, for minutes? Does that have to be posted? Well, I think our auditors are in a different category. It's a different, I think there are some exemptions for sightings, but I don't want to say that off the top of my head. Yeah, we'd have to look into it. It's kind of like a running journal. Yeah, I mean, the fact of the matter is you need, you should have some kind of minutes of your meetings. So, it's a good idea, because that's somewhat challenging. So, we had a journal and somebody says, well, what did you do on October 19th? We did billing for taxes and stuff like that. A lot of you keep the record. Well, you're asked to see these records. We're back to the, we're back to the, yeah, that's a difference, great. Did they just like open the vault up and say, well, it's in there, or you say you'd want to see like, well, let's say, select where we need to meet. Well, I would be able to say, well, let's see, if you're looking for same year 1930, 1935, it should be in that volume right there. So, I would say that it will depend on each town clerk and I'm going to, I'm going to relinquish that question to the town clerk here and say, I don't know how should we do it. So, there's nothing in statute that says you got to follow this procedure, but I would say that she's not going to just let you go, willy-nilly into the vault and make a mess of the thing. She's going to say just a second and go get the minutes that you're looking for. Is that true? You're leaving us. No, sir, no, sir. It's obvious not. Let me, let me be clear. I listened to what the town clerk said. I'm not, I'm not. I'm not. Yes, sir. I'd often take you on a christmas dinner if there's no place open. No, no, no.