By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
The work and meetings of the Transition Task Force (TTF) will be open to the public and follow the spirit of the Open Public Meetings Act.
With this the TTF will be able to go into executive sessions closed to the public for personnel, contract, negotiation or litigation matters.
The main discussion of its members at a Wednesday night meeting focused on the subcommittees and their Open Public Meeting, also known as Sunshine, obligations.
”I would hope the subcommittees would think seriously about going into executive session, even if it was for one of those four topics … as blunt and difficult as they might be,” said Mark Freda, TTF chair, who has been advocating for open discussions since the issue came up at an earlier meeting. “It better serves the purpose of the task force.”
Princeton Township Mayor Chad Goerner, who is a member of the Joint Shared Services Consolidation Commission (JSSCC) as well as the TTF, said that all of the JSSCC subcommittee meetings were open to the public.
”They were announced on the CGR website and when there were topics that became very interesting to the public, we did have the public show up at our meetings and some of them spoke,” he said. “There were particular periods of time where we were discussing particular issues where we went into executive session, but it was very rare.”
Other task force members spoke out in support of being open.
”I don’t want lawsuits over this so I would really rather us be as clean and nice about this both in the spirit of the law as well as the law and abide by the Open Public Meetings Act,” said TTF member Linda Mather.
Some members still had concerns about being so open, both at this session and the TTF’s last meeting.
”I don’t think the public interest is served if you have all ideas out being discussed if they are not ultimately going to be recommended,” said Jim Levine. “(The subcommittees) will come to less good decisions if there is not a chance for people to freely discuss ideas that in a public forum just shouldn’t be discussed.”
He said anything remotely comes close to a decision should be public and the public would like a vetting of ideas at large and presented with more refined ideas.
At the TTF meeting on Feb.8, Mr. Levine suggested a group to inform the public and make the outcomes of meetings public, implying the public might not be interested in all of the decision-making processes.
”It’s like making sausage, I think you don’t want to see what goes into it,” he said earlier this month.
At that earlier meeting, Dorothea Berkhout, citing her familiarity with the Open Public Meetings Act during her six years as school board president, said she thinks the Sunshine Law does not apply to the task force because its does not vote on decisions and are not making decisions.
”We may vote among ourselves to make a recommendation, but the people who will be voting are the council and the committee,” she said. “If we decide our way of communicating is to allow the public to attend all of our meetings it doesn’t necessarily mean, even according to the Open Public Meetings Act, that we need to have public input at every meeting. I don’t know how much time we have, I don’t think we have a lot of time … if we decide to have all of our meetings in public, or at least the task force, do we always want time for public input?”
She said public input could be gathered with a suggestion area on the CGR website.
The Open Public Meetings Act does not apply to bodies that do not expend funds or adopt ordinances, but the resolution that creates the TTF expects the group to follow the Open Public Meetings Act, said William Kearns, the proposed TTF attorney at the Feb. 22 meeting.
”You’re breaking new ground, a body like this hasn’t existed before,” he said. “The practical answer is ‘Why raise an issue as far as you are concerned about complying with the Open Public Meetings law?’”
As to the subcommittees, which are not a majority voting group, are exempt from Sunshine laws.
”However, you are creating the subcommittees, so you can establish a policy for those subcommittees to do as much that can be done in an open process,” said Mr. Kearns. “Honestly, you are going to get to some committees where they need to discuss details of the labor contracts or a personnel issue that they can legally go into closed session. Anything that comes to you from the subcommittees that you are going to consider I think you have to be open for your part.”
The task force unanimously agreed to abide by the Sunshine laws in all their meetings, including subcommittees.

