Believe me I do not want to go this far, but it really bothers me that the comments of the Members of the Airport Commission regarding the departure of sole commercial airlines, Allegiant Air, from the Worcester market is referred to only as "discussion ensued"..
Mass General Law Link below on Pubic Open Meetings
http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/39-23b.htm
Enforcement
The district attorney of the county in which the violation occurred is responsible for enforcing the Open Meeting Law at the local and county level. The Attorney General is responsible for enforcing the Law at the state level.
If a governmental body fails to follow the Open Meeting Law, three or more registered voters, the district attorney, or the attorney general can seek a court order. The governmental body has the burden of proving that it did not violate the Law. Any court order that is issued can include an order invalidating the action taken at the meeting at issue or an order imposing a fine against the governmental body.
The commonwealth takes the Open Public Meeting Laws very seriously.
Executive Sessions
No executive session shall be held until the governmental body has first convened in an open session for which notice has been given, a majority of the members have voted to go into executive session and the vote of each member is recorded on a roll call vote and entered into the minutes, the presiding officer has cited the purpose for an executive session, and the presiding officer has stated before the executive session if the governmental body will reconvene after the executive session.
Since no board minutes have ever had a vote on an Executive Session then I can assume that we have not had any Executive Session meetings since January, 2005.
Same Time Next Year
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It’s been nearly a year since I wrote about the problems that come from
having 11 bosses who are not on the same page about anything, as well as
suggestion...
6 months ago
1 comment:
Steve F:
Thanks.. Look at the September, 2006 minutes, we have more detail on whether a company (PUMA) wants to do a commercial/advertisement in the terminal, versus what the Members' thoughts were on the departure of our one commercial carrier, Allegiant Air, from ORH??
Steve, consider this there has been no mention of discussions with any commercial airlines since last August, 200 (Miami Air was mentioned). I had thought that maybe there had been Executive Sessions, where this was discussed in secret. Now I find out that can be no Executive Sessions unless it is voted on at the Airport Board Meetings and be part of the Minutes of the Meeting. Since this has not ocurred, we must assume that there have been no Executive Sessions.
The only conclusion is then that discussions with commercial airlines has never been discussed by our Airport Commission Members since they have neither 1) been in the official Airport Board Minutes or 2) nor has there been any Executive Sessions since last August, 2005.
The only loophole, when you look at the Mass General Law, is in the second line
"No quorum of a governmental body shall meet in private for the purpose of deciding on or deliberating toward a decision on any matter except as provided by this section"...
The key word here is "quorum".
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