Rule Number 18 of The Southbridge Town Council Rules and Regulations states:
“All rules of procedure not considered herein shall
be governed by ‘Roberts Rules of Parliamentary Procedure’.”
It has recently been brought to my attention that on
a number of occasions meetings of various subcommittees have been held where
there was not a quorum of the subcommittee membership in attendance. In order
to resolve this problem the council chair or vice-chair has been called upon to
meet quorum requirements in their status as ex-officio
members of all subcommittees as provided for in Town Council rule #4:
“Each Councilor shall be assigned equally to subcommittees
except for the Chairman and Vice-Chairman, who shall be ex-officio members of
all subcommittees, and shall be able to participate and to vote.”
The problem with this is that under Roberts Rules of
Order, which according to the council’s own rule number 18 is the governing
authority, ex-officio members of
committees can indeed participate and vote. However, in the case of the
Chairman (referred to in Roberts Rules as the president) and by extension, given
office and status as defined under rule 4, the vice-chairman, cannot be counted
toward the presence of a quorum:
“As an ex-officio member of a committee, the
president has the same rights as other committee members, but is not obligated
to attend meetings of the committee and is not counted in determining the
number required for a quorum or whether a quorum is present.” (Robert’s Rules
Of Order Newly Revised, 10th edition, page 440)
The consequences of this are obvious.
In all cases where a subcommittee meeting was held
and a quorum was achieved only due to the presence of the chairman or
vice-chairman acting in their ex-officio
capacity, that meeting was invalid because no quorum was in fact present.
In addition, such meetings and all their proceedings
and actions were violations of the state’s Open Meeting Law. Finally, if five
or more council members were present and business was discussed then it was an
illegal meeting of such councilors, a potential ethics violation, not protected under the rubric of a
legitimate public meeting.
(NOTE:
The explanatory notes to the Attorney General’s Open Meeting Law Complaint Form state: “The complaint must be filed with the public body within 30 days of the
alleged violation, or if the alleged Open
Meeting Law violation could not reasonably have been known at the time it
occurred, then within 30 days of the date it should reasonably have been
discovered. [emphasis addes])
If I understood the reports on subcommittee meetings tonight, the DPW subcommittee meeting only had a quorum because of the presence of the chairman and second meetings of both EHS and PPP only had quorums because of the presence of citizen members.
ReplyDeleteNow, I could be mistaken, but if true, then we had one violation as outlined above and two where the decisions were by unelected citizen members.
Councilor Marcucci is now raising an interesting question – how did something get added to Councilor Langevin’s subcommittee agenda without his knowledge?
ReplyDeleteNow Charette is saying "trust me". Isn't that what he said about having a "sub-station" on Main Street?
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