Meeting tapes are hot open records topic
From Sunshine Review
February 5, 2009
[edit] Meeting tapes are hot open records topic
"I haven't had occasion to make use of Pennsylvania's new Open Records Law until this week.
The impetus was the East Penn School Board's stealth decision to give Superintendent Thomas Seidenberger a 3.2 percent raise and a $3,000 bonus. This motion, refined in executive session, was approved 7-2 at the board's Jan. 26 meeting.
That's fine. I'm not sure this is the time to be giving bonuses, but the board wanted to recognize his efforts, and he was overdue for his annual review. It's proper to discuss all this in executive session, under the state Sunshine Act's personnel exemption, as long as the vote is in public.
But as a result of a disagreement about when the public was made aware that this subject had been added to the agenda -- and a possible Sunshine Act violation relating to that -- I decided to listen to the district's tape of the meeting."
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