Pearson v. Bd. Of Selectmen of Longmeadow

• Decision Date: 14 April 2000
• Docket Number: P-762
• Citation: 49 Mass.App.Ct. 119,726 N.E.2d 980
• Parties: (Mass. 2000) JOHN E. PEARSON & others <A HREF="#fr1-1" name="fn1-1">1 , v. BOARD OF SELECTMEN OF LONGMEADOW. No.: 98-
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 980

726 N.E.2d 980 (Mass. 2000)

JOHN E. PEARSON & others¹, v. BOARD OF SELECTMEN OF LONGMEADOW.

No.: 98-P-762

MASSACHUSETTS COURT OF APPEALS, Hampden County

Argued October 7, 1999.

Decided April 14, 2000.

Bernard W. Fang for the plaintiffs.

Michael K. Callan (David J. Martel with him) for the defendant.

Open Meeting Law. Municipal Corporations, Open meetings. Statute, Construction. Words, "Quorum," "Subcommittee."

Civil action commenced in the Superior Court Department on June 11, 1996.

The case was heard by Bertha D. Josephson, J.

Porada, Dreben, & Beck, JJ.

DREBEN, J.

This appeal concerns the applicability of G. L. c. 39, §§ 23A and 23B, the open meeting law, to a nonpublic meeting attended by the chairman of the board of selectmen of Longmeadow, officials of the city of Springfield, and others. A judge of the Superior Court, after a jury-waived trial, held that there was no violation of c. 39 by reason of the chairman's attendance. We affirm the judgment.

The facts found by the trial judge, supplemented in minor details by uncontroverted testimony, are as follows. In the spring of 1996, the city announced plans to reopen a part of Forest Park known as the King Philip Stockade (Stockade). Before its closure in 1980, the Stockade had been open to the public via Western Drive Access Road, a road which extended from Western Drive over a strip of land owned by Longmeadow into the Stockade. Residents from the Western Drive area of Longmeadow immediately became concerned about the impact that vehicular traffic to and from the Stockade would have on their neighborhood. In the beginning of May, Springfield officials indicated that they would open the Stockade on May 24 and would use the Western Drive Access Road. Discussions between Longmeadow residents and Springfield officials were not reassuring to Longmeadow, and an emergency meeting of the Longmeadow board of selectmen (board) was scheduled for Wednesday, May 22, 1996, at 5:30 P.M. Notice of the meeting was properly given. On the afternoon of May 22, the chairman of the board, after consulting with the other selectmen and the board's executive secretary, decided to cancel the meeting.

Instead, a nonpublic meeting was held.² Present at that meeting were two Western Drive residents,³ the board's executive secretary, the chairman of the board, the mayor of Springfield, and two other Springfield officials.⁴ The mayor proposed that the use of Western Drive Access Road be temporary until Springfield could construct a new entrance. The chairman suggested that the mayor delay the opening of the Stockade for ten days to allow time for the board to consider and vote on any proposal. In the meantime, Longmeadow's town counsel and the Springfield city solicitor's office were to draft a proposed agreement prior to the board's meeting.

Following the May 22, 1996 meeting, an open community meeting, announced by fliers, was held on May 28 to discuss the suggestion made by the mayor. Fifty to sixty residents attended the meeting, including the two Western Drive residents who had been present at the May 22 meeting. Also present were one of the plaintiffs and one of the defendant selectmen. There appeared to be very little opposition to the plan.

On May 30, 1996, the full board met, discussed, and voted on the proposed agreement which had been drafted in the interim by counsel for Springfield and Longmeadow. At least one hand-written change was made to the agreement at the board's meeting.

Thereafter, one of the plaintiffs sought an opinion from the Hampden County district attorney's office that the open meeting law had been violated by the May 22 meeting. The district attorney concluded otherwise,⁵ and this action followed.

Relying on Nigro v. Conservation Commn. of Canton, 17 Mass. App. Ct. 433 (1984), the plaintiffs claimed to the trial court, and now argue on appeal, that the chairman was a subcommittee of the board, that he participated in discussing the terms of the proposal presented to the board, and that he, therefore, recommended the proposal. He did not merely receive a proposal for delivery to the board, but rather an agreement was negotiated with discussion between the parties. The Nigro court held that when a quorum of the subcommittee of the Canton conservation commission engaged in making findings of fact or formulating recommendations, and such findings and recommendations were to be submitted to the commission, the subcommittee was required to comply with the open meeting law. Id. at 435 n.4 & 436. In Nigro, as in the case at bar, the subcommittee could merely make recommendations; only the commission -- here only the board -- could make the decision; therefore,the plaintiffs argue,Nigro is controlling.⁶

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The trial judge thought otherwise. After referring to the definitions of "meeting" and "deliberation" as contained in

§ 23A, which, together with the other relevant portions of the statute, are set forth in the margin,⁷ she concluded: "[f]or a meeting to take place, there must be 'deliberation' by a 'governmental body' in order to arrive at a 'decision.'" She distinguished Nigro, pointing out that in that case a three-person subcommittee of the seven-member conservation commission of Canton was charged with making "factual investigations, reporting its findings to the full commission, and making verbal recommendations as to actions which should be taken by the commission." Nigro, 17 Mass. App. Ct. at 434. Relying on her finding that the purpose of the May 22 meeting was to allow the mayor to present his proposal to those present, including the chairman of the board who was to convey the proposal to the full board, she found that, unlike the subcommittee in Nigro, the chairman did not have the authority to act on behalf of the board to make any decisions at the meeting. "He did not engage in any deliberations asare required for a subcommittee to be cast under the open meeting law."

In view of the wide-ranging discussions at the May 22 meeting participated in by the chairman, as reflected in the "meeting notes" taken by the executive secretary of the board,⁸ and in view of the detailed agreement drafted by counsel for the two municipalities after the meeting of May 22 and prior to May 30, the trial judge's narrow interpretation of "deliberation" poses some difficulty of application. Although her conclusion was right that the open meeting law was inapplicable to the May 22 meeting, we focus our opinion on other concepts in that law. See Alholm v. Wareham, 371 Mass. 621, 625 (1976).

We turn to the statute and its two central provisions which appear in § 23B. See note 7, supra. These provide that "[a]ll meetings of a governmental body shall be open to the public" and that "[n]o quorum of a governmental body shall meet in private for the purpose of deciding on or deliberating toward a decision on any matter except as provided by this section" (i.e., allowing certain matters to be decided in executive session -- provisions not here applicable). Although a governmental body includes all subcommittees, and although the parties and the trial judge have characterized the chairman of the board as a "subcommittee" appointed by the board, neither the Nigro case, 17 Mass. App. Ct. at 435 n.4, nor the statute provides support for the proposition that a single member of a governmental body who attends a meeting with others who are not members of the same governmental body -- indeed, with officials of another municipality -- is a "subcommittee" within the meaning of the open meeting law.

The "plain and ordinary meaning" of the language of §§ 23A and 23B, looked at as a whole, see Johnson's Case, 318 Mass. 741, 747 (1945), dictates otherwise. Thus, "deliberation" is defined as "a verbal exchange between a quorum of members of a governmental body"; "meeting" is defined as "any corporal convening and deliberation of a governmental body for which a quorum is required . . ."; and "quorum" is defined as "a simple majority of a governmental body unless otherwise defined . . ." (emphasis supplied). That the first sentence in § 23B is immediately followed by the second sentence which states that no quorum of a governmental body shall meet in private, reinforces the conclusion that a meeting of a "subcommittee" of a governmental body as defined in § 23A does not include a subcommittee of one.

The definition of the term "quorum" and its use in the definitions of "meeting" and of "deliberation" indicate that the term is meant to signify group action. This meaning is borne out by dictionary definition and is suggested by case law. See, e.g., Webster's Third New Intl. Dictionary 1868 (1993), defining "quorum" as "the number of members of an organized body of persons (as a legislature, court, or board of directors) that when duly assembled is legally competent to transact business in the absence of the other members." See also Wilson v. San Francisco Mun. Ry., 29 Cal. App. 3d 870, 878-879 (1973) (use of terms "board," "commission," "committee," and "body" indicate that single individual acting as a hearing officer is not covered by California's open meeting law [the Brown Act]); Advertiser Co. v. Wallis, 493 So. 2d 1365, 1368-1370 (Ala. 1986) (where Sunshine Law applied to "any . . . 'body, board or commission' which disburses public funds," it is applicable only to "those [entities] governed by a group of individuals who sit as a deliberative body to set policy regarding the public matters with which the entity is entrusted;" it does not apply to the public corporation known as the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, which is composed of the governor and the commissioner, where the statutory scheme...