Times files open meetings complaint against Lake Tom officials

The Lakeland Times has filed an open meetings complaint against Lake Tomahawk town chairman George DeMet and town supervisor Lenore Lopez, alleging a violation of the state’s open meetings statute when they both attended an enhanced wake boat presentation last year without properly posting their attendance as a quorum of the town board.

The two make for a majority of the three-member Lake Tomahawk town board.

This week Lakeland Times publisher Gregg Walker asked Oneida County district attorney Jillian Pfeifer to cite the pair for the violation.

As the Times’s Trevor Greene reported last week, DeMet took responsibility for the quorum notice not being posted, telling Greene that it was “on me.”

As DeMet remembered it, the presentation by Joe Steinhage occurred late last summer or fall and took place immediately following a regular and properly noticed meeting of the Lake Tomahawk board of supervisors.

“Joe wanted to … give his presentation and we had already made up an agenda for that particular month,” DeMet told Greene. “And so I said ‘I’m sorry, you can’t present it at a town board meeting, but if you want to have a little informational, educational whatever presentation, you can do it at the town hall after the board meeting is over.’ So we adjourned our town board meeting (and) some people left, some people stayed, and he gave his little spiel on that subject.”

Lopez also stayed behind to attend Steinhage’s presentation, DeMet told the newspaper. 

Walker wrote that he did not believe the infraction was made with malicious intent, and he acknowledged previous correspondence with Pfeifer about the effective use of taxpayers’ time when it comes to technical violations of the law. 

“That said, this is more than a technical violation, for, if government is to be transparent, public officials must be responsible for knowing the open government laws and they must be accountable when they break them,” Walker wrote to Pfeifer. “If public officials routinely get away with breaking the law without any consequences whatsoever, they will be encouraged — and other officials will be similarly encouraged — to break the law again and again.” 

Walker also wrote that it did not make any difference whether the officials were truly sorry and admitted the violation, as was the case with DeMet. 

“As I have argued in the past, average citizens don’t get out of paying fines for various infractions when they violate the law,” he wrote. “The pages of our newspaper are filled with the names of people being cited for minor infractions, such as not getting their septic systems pumped in timely fashion. Likely many if not most of those are inadvertent. But they can’t just say they are sorry and avoid a fine, and public officials shouldn’t be able to, either.”

That’s especially so because those public officials are the very ones enacting the fines and fees that ordinary citizens must pay, Walker wrote. 

“Not holding public officials similarly accountable when everyone else must pay stokes distrust in government institutions,” he wrote.

What’s more, Walker continued, even seemingly minor infractions can have significant consequences, and lead to larger violations. 

“For instance, the alleged infraction by DeMet and Lopez involve the very controversial issue of enhanced wake boat regulations,” he wrote. “We have reported that, according to DeMet, Lopez had drafted a proposed enhanced wake boat ordinance for the town to consider. So we have a majority of the town board participating in a presentation about an issue that is likely to come before that board, but the public had no idea they were doing so or what influence that presentation may have on their vote.”

The public also had no way of countering any information presented because they had no idea any information was being presented in the first place, Walker contended.

“In sum, the open meetings law exists for a reason, and that is to make sure the public knows what the town board is doing, and that issues involving the town are always deliberated and debated in the open, including the presentation of information about those issues,” he wrote.

Indeed, Walker added, that’s why the law defines the scope of a public meeting needing to be noticed the way it does.

“According to the state Department of Justice, a government meeting occurs whenever there is a purpose to engage in governmental business and the number of members present is sufficient to determine the governmental body’s course of action,” he wrote. “While it might seem that DeMet and Lopez did not intend to conduct government business, the courts, especially in Showers, have ruled that government business ‘refers to any formal or informal action, including discussion, decision, or information gathering, on matters within the governmental body’s realm of authority.’” 

It’s simply not arguable that the town board members weren’t there to gather information on a matter within the town board’s realm of authority, Walker asserted.

Walker did acknowledge in the letter to Pfeifer that a court decision by Oneida County circuit court judge Michael Bloom — upheld in the court of appeals — had muddied the waters about when government business is being conducted. 

“But even under that interpretation — an actual vote is required for a meeting to even take place — it’s clear that the town board is preparing for a formal vote on the issue,” he wrote. “In addition, the appeals court that upheld the Bloom decision did so on narrow grounds and did not embrace Bloom’s theory that quorums can meet in private, without noticing a meeting, and talk about anything they want so long as they do not take a vote.”

Such an interpretation flies in the face of the spirit and language of the law, Walker wrote. 

“Under traditional open meetings interpretation supported by case law, DeMet and Lopez formed a quorum and together gathered information on a matter within the realm of the town board’s public business, and on a matter that is fully expected to come before the full town board for a vote, while not posting the quorum meeting,” he wrote. “That is a straightforward violation of the law and they should be prosecuted for it.”

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.