Page 14 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • April 17. 2013 Borough council opposes public meetings law by Frank J. McMahon The Franklin Lakes Mayor and Council oppose legislation currently being considered by the New Jersey Legislature that would reform and modernize the state’s Open Public Meetings Act. The bills, S-2511 and A3713, would revise the “Senator Byron M. Baer Open Public Meetings Act” and are intended to provide greater public access to meetings of public bodies and to information about those meetings. The primary sponsors of the two bills are Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) and Assemblyman Joseph Pennacchio (R-Essex, Morris, Passaic). According to a recently passed a resolution, the borough’s governing body opposes the bills that have been introduced in the legislature, even though the council agrees with and supports the right of the public to be present at all meetings of public bodies and to witness in full detail all phases of the deliberation, policy formulation, and decision making of public bodies. The council opposes the bills, claiming they will be a cost driver for local and state government and will make government less effective. The council claims the legislation includes a number of proposed requirements that involve costly unfunded mandates, impractical requirements, and impediments to the democratic process. The council also says the legislation would create a new definition of subcommittees that would expand subcommittees to be overly inclusive. Under the provisions of the bill, subcommittees would be required to provide public notice of subcommittee meetings if a governing body determines them to be open. Subcommittees would also be required to submit at least one report to the governing body detailing the number of meetings, names of members of the committee, and a concise statement of the matters discussed. The council argues that subcommittees do not commit the governing body to action or expend public funds. However, the bills’ requirements for subcommittee meetings would, among other things, necessitate additional administrative support for all subcommittees and increased costs for legal advertising. The council’s resolution also claims that the new requirement that agendas provide a description of all agenda items, including the names of parties to and approximate dollar amounts of any contracts to be acted upon, would delay the award of contracts and could lead to the loss of grant monies. The council also finds impractical and ineffective a new requirement that the governing body may act upon an item brought up by a citizen at a public meeting if it was not published as an agenda item only if there is a vote of 2/3 of the members present to proceed and the municipality demonstrates it is in the public’s best interest and includes the reasons why it is in the public best interest in the minutes. The council claims that new requirement would unnecessarily inhibit the operations of municipal government and it runs contrary to the time-honored tradition of holding a public meeting for the very purpose of soliciting such input and acting upon it. Another new requirement in the bills that the council opposes is one that states that electronic communications, such as e-mails and text messages, concerning public business among an effective majority of the members of the governing body that occurred prior to a meeting must become part of the meeting minutes and recordings as a permanent municipal record. The council calls that new requirement “unworkable and unmanageable” as the technology does not always exist to make “hard copies” or digital copies of text messages and the records custodian does not always have access to them. (continued on page 20)