According to an opinion by the Open Meetings Compliance Board, the three Republican members of the Montgomery County Board of Elections violated the Open Meetings Act when they held a private conference call. As readers may recall, this call took place during the heated debate over the movement of early voting locations to less Democratic areas in the County.
From the opinion’s conclusion:
We have concluded that three voting members, a majority of the voting members of the elections board, constitute a “quorum” for purposes of the Act such that a conference call among three voting members constituted a meeting subject to the Act. We have recognized that applying the Act’s quorum definition to the elections board is complicated, and this matter posed the unusual circumstance in which the public body’s own definition, when applied, did not secure the public’s right to observe every stage of the public body’s consideration of public business. Although we can see that the board members might reasonably have relied on the bylaws provision when they conducted the board’s business among themselves, we nonetheless find that the conference call violated the Act. We therefore direct the elections board to the acknowledgment requirement in $ 3-211. We have not commented on how the elections board must transact business under the elections laws.
You can read the full letter here:
Open Meetings Compliance Letter on Paul E. Bessel’s Complaint
