In the announcement of his economic team, President-elect Barack Obama noted the lack of “adult supervision” of the finance sector in recent and not-so-recent years. Now that the chickens of deregulation and lax enforcement have come home to roost and we set about getting our house in order, transparency and open government will be more important than ever. This applies not only to the federal government but also to state and local government, including boards of education. In addition, homeowner and condominium associations, an ever-increasing form of homeownership in Maryland and across our nation, are required in other sections of the code to conduct their business in open meetings.
Over the years there have been numerous bills introduced in the Maryland General Assembly in Annapolis to tighten our open-meetings law. Most have failed. A few have passed. The typical scenario is that the Maryland, Delaware, D.C. Press Association, Common Cause, and the American Civil Liberties Union come out in support of more transparency and various governmental organizations like the Maryland Association of Counties, the Maryland Municipal League, and the Maryland Association of Boards of Education come out in opposition, usually citing limitations on necessary discussion as their rationale. These governmental entities in fact do a large majority of their work in public, and now it’s time for us to break down this divide and work to make our open-meeting law here in Maryland as good as possible to protect the public interest as we go about doing the people’s business.
The exemption for “administrative function” in the law has undergone considerable refining by the legislature and is now in a position to provide strong protection to the public interest. The same applies to the requirement for clear and thorough minutes to be made public when occasion arises that the public interest can indeed be best served by calling a closed meeting under one of the many exceptions stated in the law, including discussing employment matters.
Several years ago, the legislature passed a bill authorizing any person to file in circuit court a petition alleging violation of specified provisions of the Open Meetings Act if she believes a public body failed to comply with the open-meetings law. The then-governor vetoed the bill. When the legislature next convened in the following January, the veto was overridden and this bill giving the people increased rights regarding open meetings became law.
One major remaining flaw in our Maryland open-meetings law lies in the ability of a public body to take an official vote during a closed session. During the 2008 session of the Maryland legislature, I introduced a bill in the House of Delegates to address this flaw. The impetus for the bill was a vote in closed session by the Maryland Stadium Authority involving significant sums of public funds. The usual participants mentioned above showed up and testified for and against respectively. The State of Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board, a public body appointed by the governor and charged with resolving complaints alleging a violation of the act, submitted written testimony that the bill “in its present form raises significant interpretive problems.” Understandably, the members of the legislative committee to which the bill was assigned were concerned about the board’s position, and did not pass the bill to the floor of the House. Now we need the Open Meetings Compliance Board to help with finding a solution to these interpretation concerns in order to provide more transparency, so that Maryland residents can better follow the workings of their government. Surely we can find a way to do this.
Del. Elizabeth Bobo, a Democrat, represents Howard County. Reach her at [email protected].
