July 30, 2008
Nashua Telegraph
Let’s open today’s editorial with a brief history quiz:
Q: Who made the following statement: “People don’t trust what they can’t see and don’t understand. Sunshine is a good thing. Open government is a good thing.”
A): George Washington
B): Thomas Jefferson
C): Donnalee Lozeau
If you guessed “C,” you are correct.
The Nashua mayor made that comment in September 2007 – as a mayoral candidate – while discussing how proud she was of the “openness and transparency” of her legislative committee’s work during the Claremont education-funding lawsuit when she was a member of the House of Representatives.
So perhaps you can understand our disappointment, then, over the mayor’s lip service to these principles in the first 72 hours following the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission’s ruling on the city’s acquisition of the local water utility.
On Friday afternoon, the PUC made public its 120-page decision that the city can acquire Pennichuck Water Works by eminent domain for $203 million, a ruling Pennichuck later indicated it would appeal.
The PUC announcement prompted the mayor to schedule a “nonmeeting” – a term that doesn’t even appear in the state Right-to-Know Law – of the board of aldermen for Monday night at City Hall.
There, behind closed doors and over the stated objections of The Telegraph, she and about a dozen aldermen were briefed on the PUC decision by their legal counsel.
As we’ve stated in the past, we do not begrudge the mayor nor any public body the right to meet privately with their attorneys when deemed appropriate. Certainly, one could argue this was one of those cases.
But we vehemently object to using a so-called “nonmeeting” for this purpose as opposed to citing one of the ample provisions of the state open-meeting law to move from an official meeting into a “nonpublic session.”
What’s the difference?
You don’t have to keep minutes at a “nonmeeting.”
It is our contention that the reference to “consultation with legal counsel” not constituting a meeting in the law was never intended to encourage a quorum of a public body to, in essence, conduct a secret meeting behind closed doors with no written record of what transpired.
Rather, it’s more likely it was intended to allow a small number of representatives from a committee – short of a quorum – to seek legal advice outside of the formal meeting structure.
In this case, the Right-to-Know Law contains a specific provision that would have allowed the aldermen to enter a nonpublic session with their attorney.
Specifically, it allows these closed-door sessions for “consideration of the acquisition, sale or lease of real or personal property which, if discussed in public, would likely benefit a party or parties whose interests are adverse to those of the general community.”
Now is it likely that minutes of such a session would have been made available to the public within the required 72 hours?
Perhaps not. Given the topic at hand, the aldermen would have been more likely to move to seal the minutes by a two-thirds majority vote.
But at least there would have been minutes of what took place – a written record that could be unsealed at a later date after the Pennichuck issue is ultimately put to rest.
As for our new mayor, we don’t question that deep down she meant what she said during the campaign about the importance of open government.
But this isn’t the first time she has either called or participated in one of these bogus “nonmeetings” since taking office in January, including one that led to a successful lawsuit by The Telegraph three months earlier.
After today, we’re hoping that it will be her last.