— by Minor Lile, Orcas Issues Reporter —
Once again the Port Commission has run afoul of the rules governing public meetings, this time resulting in the cancellation of the special meeting that had been scheduled for Tuesday, January 28.
The meeting was cancelled based on an opinion provided by the Municipal Research and Services Center (MRSC), a nonprofit organization that helps local governments across Washington State by providing legal and policy guidance. The opinion was requested by Commissioner Pierrette Guimond. According to the MSRC, if a decision is to be made by the Commission at a special meeting, the agenda must specify the business to be transacted rather than simply refer to ‘unfinished business’ as was done in the advance meeting notice.
In other words, by not specifying in the meeting notice that the agenda was to address the ongoing management of the airport in the wake of last week’s resignation of former acting manager Dwight Guss, the Commission was legally unable to make any decisions related to this topic.
At this time, there is no word on when another meeting might be scheduled.
Here are some resources that explain the requirements in greater detail:
https://www.atg.wa.gov/open-government-training
And here is a reference booklet that is particularly useful (esp. Ch. 3):
https://agportal-s3bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/uploadedfiles/Home/About_the_Office/Open_Government/Open_Government_Internet_Manual/Open%20Government%20Resource%20Manual%202016%20-%20Oct.%2031%202016%20%282%29.pdf
Wow; you learn something new every day – and this is certainly another new situation at the Port. There have been many in my 1.5 years of being involved with meetings and this Master Plan process, and other issues like the Vegetation (Tree) Removal project and sadly, the mitigation attempting to make up for it.
I never got the impression by this agenda that any vote or action was going to be made. RCW 42.30.110 specifies which instances warrant executive sessions. Since there’s no manager performance to evaluate – the usual reason for an executive session besides real estate issues – I’m baffled that the MRSC was called.
Couldn’t there have been a simpler way to handle this, such as… teamwork… the more experienced people (which are many) helping the less experienced people to write a proper agenda, if that was needed?
Thanks to Matt Fikse for the reference links to more information so that we citizens can also school ourselves in the RCWs. Perhaps Matt can shed some light on my confusion.