{"id":15500,"date":"2022-04-13T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=15500"},"modified":"2022-04-12T18:33:58","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T22:33:58","slug":"planning-loses-yet-another-open-meetings-act-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=15500","title":{"rendered":"Planning Loses Yet Another Open Meetings Act Case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>They do work at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Louis Wilen filed a complaint on January 31 that the Olney Town Center Advisory Committee (OTCAC), \u201ca public body chartered by the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission\u201d is not adhering to the requirements of the Open Meetings Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Notwithstanding Planning Board Chair <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/transportation\/2022\/02\/03\/montgomery-council-planning-board-thrive\/\">Casey Anderson\u2019s claim<\/a> that \u201cWhenever anyone points out gaps in our procedures, we never hesitate to make improvements\u201d, it remains business as usual over at Planning and they fought the claim. In its response to the Open Meetings Compliance Board, it stated that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>[T]he OTCAC is <strong>not a public body <\/strong>as defined by the Maryland Open Meetings Act as defined by the Maryland Open Meetings Act, Title 3, General Provisions Article of the Annotated Code of Maryland (2002) (the \u201cOpen Meetings Act\u201d), and therefore not subject to its requirements and restrictions. (emphasis in original)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The Open Meetings Compliance Board did not agree, stating \u201cwe conclude that the Committee here is a public body subject to the Act\u201d in its opinion explaining how its previous decisions along with the history of OTCAC make this clear. I\u2019ve posted the full opinion below and you can also read it by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/569585154\/Open-Meetings-Compliance-Board-Opinion\">clicking on this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"scribd_iframe_embed\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/embeds\/569585154\/content?start_page=1&view_mode&access_key=key-n11YFU6NTOczpDIZfRUE\"  data-auto-height=\"true\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"scribd_569585154\" width=\"100%\" height=\"500\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe>\n\t\t<div style=\"font-size:10px;text-align:center;width:100%\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/569585154\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">View this document on Scribd<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They do work at it. Louis Wilen filed a complaint on January 31 that the Olney Town Center Advisory Committee (OTCAC), \u201ca public body chartered by the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission\u201d is not adhering to the requirements of the Open Meetings Act. Notwithstanding Planning Board Chair Casey Anderson\u2019s claim that \u201cWhenever anyone &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=15500\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Planning Loses Yet Another Open Meetings Act Case<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2495],"tags":[2335,2497,2461,2496],"class_list":["post-15500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-meetings-act","tag-casey-anderson","tag-louis-wilen","tag-m-ncppc","tag-olney-town-center-advisory-committee"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-420","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15500"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15502,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15500\/revisions\/15502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}