Municipal councilors created a policy to make it easier for the public to see the e-mails they send to each other, but the huge workload has led to a quiet change in the public's access.I'm not really interested in the Amesbury bit; I'm interested in the larger picture.
In 2006, the council was accused of illegally exchanging e-mails about the defeated library renovation project, and an Essex Superior Court judge required councilors to establish an e-mail policy that would restrict how they communicate electronically with one another.
The state's Open Meeting bylaw prohibits public officials from deliberating about town issues, except during a public meeting. For certain topics, the bylaw allows town committees to go behind closed doors. But the intent to conduct an executive session must be announced during a public meeting, and the reason for doing so must be stated.First of all - do residents of Newburyport have access to the City Council's emails? Sometimes councilors and I have some pretty interesting email exchanges ... I don't blurt everything on here, you know.
And more relevant, what's to stop any "public official" from "deliberating" via Facebook or some other social media networking site, if they are so inclined?
Town Clerk Bonnijo Kitchin estimated that in 2007, 10 hours of her work week was spent reading, printing and filing e-mails.Does someone have to start monitoring social networking activities as well? All of these applications or whatever have a private message feature. I'm not clear on how a town clerk would be able to read, print and file these messages.
Is there going to be a law against officials being friends on Facebook, for example?
Again - I'm not saying anyone is doing this.
Not to mention that there's this thing called a phone, which anyone can pick up, dial a number, and talk.
Unless we're going to tap their phones as well.
I've had discussions with a couple of our councilors around this law and it seems they at least are pretty clear about their limitations on deliberating outside of meetings.
And since they seem sometimes to be pretty clueless (in a good, law abiding way) about how each votes on a matter before them, I think they're doing a good job with it.
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Speakign of e-mails, I've often wondered about some members of the Newburyport school committee who have laptops in front of them during meetings. A friend swears to me that they are IMing each other, which is illegal in a public meeting. That would explain why they are often very interested in their computers during the meetings. Do you know anything about this?
I believe they get agenda items electronically and that's what they're looking at. Some city councillors do the same.
Do you know that for a fact, or is that just a guess? The last meeting I went to, they (Menin, Hooper, Bechtel) sure were looking at those laptops a lot during discussions. One of the attendees told me it was a suspicion by some in the audience that they were communicating. Does the HS have wifi?
That was a guess, Susan. I haven't actually been to a SC meeting in more than a year (but I sometimes watch them on cable).
I seem to remember Kevin Lyons at the last meeting talking about getting wifi in all the schools, but I have no clue if it aleady exists at the high school.
Doesn't matter if it's there or not if you have a wireless account of your own, though, does it?
That means you wrote last week's story on the school committee meeting by watching it on television???? It quoted people from the meeting and everything. At least the Daily News shows up for at least part of the meeting?
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