The Nashua board of education learns to count but just don’t count on them to follow the “Right to Know Law”, RSA 91:A.
Its Preamble goes like this:
91-A:1 Preamble. – Openness in the conduct of public business is essential to a democratic society. The purpose of this chapter is to ensure both the greatest possible public access to the actions, discussions and records of all public bodies, and their accountability to the people. (I highlighted the discussions portion so it would be easy for even school board members to notice.)
Here is how the press is playing it: “PUBLIC MEETING LAW NOT VIOLATED.” Nice headline wouldn’t you say?
And now for the rest of the story, as told by the Nashua Telegraph 12/27/04, which seems to be a belated Christmas present to at least eight of the board members as well as the superintendent, Joe Giuliano.
At a Dec. 20, Human Resources Committee (a “standing committee” made up of four regular board members) members were scheduled to consider Superintendent Giuliano’s nomination for a vacant $80,000.000 assistant principal position. (It would be assumed the meeting was legally posted and mentioned the upcoming decision as per RSA 91-A.)
After receiving calls from “more than one” board member expressing opposition to the superintendent’s nomination, Giuliano withdrew it. At least that is how the Telegraph reports it.
One board member, who apparently has ethics, is on both the school board and the Human Resources committee. He took public exception to this behind the scenes activity and asked Deputy City Attorney Stephen Bennett to look into the matter. (I know, it seems silly to ask a lawyer to take a school board to task for something like RSA 91-A but it was worth a shot.) In any case, the lawyer dutifully presented his OPINION in a letter to the board stating there was no violation of the state public meeting law.
“The school board members who spoke with one another did not constitute a quorum of the Human Resources Committee or the full Board of Education,” Bennett wrote in his OPINION letter. (So now we know several talked to each other and several called Giuliano. Quite the non-meeting eh?)
So let’s be “the taxpaying public” for a while, you know, the ones who are paying for the schools, school board, lawyers, etc.
How do you know who the person was being nominated by Giuliano?
Was that nomination a good one, a mediocre one, or was it totally insane?
Do you know how many people on the board called the superintendent to express opposition?
Was it enough to be a majority at a legal meeting, or was it the “special” or most influential members of the board?
Do you know how many called each other?
Were they on a conference line?
Was one member of the nine member board left out of the telephone tree they are apparently running?
How often does this happen?
Did anyone from the public show up at the “scheduled’ meeting only to be left out of the decision?
Since the “Nashua Board of Education Telephone Tree” was designed to cheat the right to know law, even the one board member with a sense of right and wrong may never know how the decision was made. And a decision was clearly made to take a name off the list for consideration. That is still a fact, unless someone asks the lawyer for an opinion, then of course it would be hard to say.
This same scam was exposed in Keene a while back when a member of the finance committee explained that they met all summer long in small groups, less than a quorum, so they could get things done easier.
A meeting on the phone is a meeting even if you are all not on the line at the same time, it is still conducting business. (Wait, don’t lawyers charge for time they spend on the phone? Hmmmmmmm.) The purpose of meetings on the phone, in small groups less than a quorum, or by email, is to thwart public access.
And if the phone meetings were an innocent mistake, my guess is board members, John Andrick, Scott Cote, Richard Dowd, Jack Kelley, Edwina Kwan, Latha Mangipuidi, Mary Melizzi-Golja, and Kimberly Shaw would have said so in the Telegraph article or said so publicly. Another safe bet is the lawyer would have offered new “guidelines” for meetings.
Telegraph “reporter” Michael Brindley could have asked a few tougher questions for his “story.”
Kudo’s to “Friend of the Taxpayer Michael Clemons” for standing his ground.