NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The City Council was found to be in violation of Open Meeting Law regarding an email sent by  Councilor Keith Bona last fall. 

 

Councilor Marie T. Harpin filed the complaint after Bona relayed a message from David Carver, a real estate developer, about the tax shift the council was debating to all its members and to the media.

 

Bona is chair of the Finance Committee and said he thought it important that his fellow councilors receive the email and a summary of the phone conversation he had with Carver before the council meeting of Nov. 22. 

 

The tax shift had been discussed at a previous City Council meeting and then at a Finance Committee meeting.

 

Harpin, in her complaint, called the communication a deliberation of a City Council issue and an "intentional violation" because she felt Bona was expressing an opinion.

 

The Attorney General's Office agreed, stating that Bona's argument that he was passing on "facts" and the developer's opinion were "unavailing."

 

Assistant Attorney General Mary L. Nguyen noted that there are several exemptions to the definition of deliberations, including distributing schedules, agendas and reports and documents "provided that no opinion of a member is expressed." 

 

"We find that Councilor Bona's email, and specifically his statements to all the members of the Council when he forwarded the developer's email, did not fit within any of the exemptions to the definition of deliberation," she wrote. 

 

Bona had provided commentary with Carver's message, including that he brought up "a good example" of how higher taxes might lead nonprofits to buy rather than rent space, affecting the tax base. 

 

Any communications between a quorum outside a narrow exception constitutes a deliberation, Nguyen wrote, "even if no other members respond."

 

"To the extent that the Councilor argues that his remarks were merely 'facts,' the Law's definition of 'deliberation' is not limited to opinion or decision-making communications and includes updates on matters to be discussed by the public body or matters that had previously been discussed by the public body and are still pending before it."

 

Nguyen ordered the City Council to comply with the Open Meeting Law in the future but noted that the full council had read the email into the record at Nov. 22 meeting "to remedy the violation." 

 

No further relief was ordered. 

 

Harpin read the findings at Tuesday night's City Council meeting, pointing to the need for transparency after residents had raised concerns for more than an hour about being kept in the dark about plans for locating homeless families at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. 

 

"I think that it's something that we can look at as a committee, at the community level, and as the City Council and as administration to better serve the public," she said. "We are elected officials. We are here and actually required to be an open government and our decisions and our deliberations need to be done in public meetings. That's the requirement of the law. 

 

"So, hopefully, this was a learning experience in this City Council can go forward."