Does Open Meeting Law allow public board members to share with a board quorum via email the draft of an op-ed (opposite-the-editorial or letter to the editor) that they later discuss in a regular meeting?

Wayland resident George Harris says it does not, and he has brought his concern to the Wayland Board of Selectmen who he said violated the state’s Open Meeting Law (OML) by sharing the document via email even though they were instructed not to reply via email with their revisions.

Harris submitted his complaint to selectmen and met with the board during its Monday night meeting to discuss it. That lengthy discussion, however, did not ultimately resolve the issue.

Board of Selectmen Chair Tom Fay explained that Harris’ complaint was specifically tied to a late November op-ed draft that Fay shared with the other board members via email. (That op-ed published on Patch Nov. 30 under the headline, “Letter: New Tax Relief for Wayland.”) Fay said he shared the op-ed, drafted by selectmen John Bladon, in a Nov. 28 email that contained the message, “Please do not reply to this email before tonight.”

About six hours later, selectmen gathered for a regular Monday meeting during which they discussed the op-ed and approved it for distribution to local media.

“Sending of the op-ed piece constitutes an opinion and therefore a deliberation,” Harris told selectmen Monday night.

Harris said he wanted selectmen to acknowledge the error in sending the email, sign a pledge to refrain from sending email to a quorum of the board, develop a policy governing email communication and sign a pledge to comply with the Open Meeting Law.

But selectmen Monday night said they didn’t believe a violation of the OML had occurred.

“I think the document sent is similar to a document one of us might have sent for information purposes,” Fay said, adding that the particular op-ed in question contained points previously discussed publicly in board meetings and, therefore, did not contain anything the public hadn’t already heard.

“My memory, we’d talked about all these subjects before,” Fay said. “The article was a regurgitation, a summary of issues we’d discussed before.”

Correia added that he believed that particular op-ed to be statement of fact rather than opinion.   

“We should not be debating what is an opinion,” Harris said, adding that he believed this to be a fundamental element of OML – that no deliberation should occur outside of a public meeting.

Fay asked whether Harris preferred one or two board members to draft such articles then distribute them at a meeting where the collective board could “wordsmith” them. Fay said he feels the op-ed pieces are key to board transparency, and Harris’ complaint could “douse the effort to let [the] people of the town know what we think about issues.”

But Harris disagreed and said the board had multiple options for communicating with the public.

Fay said he was willing to attempt and meet Harris’ recommendations, but Selectmen Joe Nolan said he did not think the board should draft policy based solely on Harris’ concerns.

Nolan said he would prefer the attorney general respond to the issue.

The discussion concluded with Fay proposing to draft a response to Harris’ complaint.