LA PLATA — A La Plata resident who was asked to put down her protest sign during a Town Council meeting did not have her rights under Maryland’s Open Meetings Act violated, a state board has ruled.
In an opinion dated Nov. 6, the Open Meetings Compliance Board found no violation by the La Plata Town Council. The complaint grew out of the council’s Sept. 8 meeting, when the town manager approached a resident in the audience and asked her to lower a handheld sign reading “No charter changes without people.” She set the sign on the floor without comment, according to the opinion.
The ruling is narrow. The three-member board said the law guarantees the public the right to attend a meeting and watch a public body deliberate, not to take part, and it found nothing in what it called a “limited record” showing the council kept the resident from doing that. The board did not decide whether a town may ban signs, and it noted that La Plata does not yet appear to have a written rule on them.
The opinion, 20 OMCB Opinions 334, does not name the complainant.
The sign appeared as the council was moving to rewrite the mayor’s job. A public notice set a Sept. 8 hearing on Charter Amendment Resolution 26-50, on the powers and duties of the mayor. The council voted 4-1 to curb the mayor’s authority, removing Mayor Jeannine James as the council’s presiding officer, and residents had until Oct. 18 to petition the change to a referendum.
According to the opinion, the town told the board the resident was asked to take the sign down because the council had moved on to a different agenda item and was finished with the issue the sign addressed.
What the resident argued
The complainant told the board she did not speak out of turn, interrupt anyone, wave the sign or block anyone’s view. She also pointed out that the council’s presiding officer never publicly found her behavior disruptive, and she argued that holding the sign broke no town law or council policy.
She cited the section of the Open Meetings Act that requires public bodies to adopt and enforce reasonable rules for the conduct of people attending their meetings.
Why the board disagreed
The board’s reasoning came in three steps.
First, it said the record did not show that the town manager, who is not a council member, acted at the council’s direction. The law applies to public bodies, not to individual employees.
Second, even if the manager was acting for the council, the board said a presiding officer’s finding of disruption matters under the law only when a body removes someone from a meeting. The resident was not removed, and the board found no sign she was kept from attending or observing.
Third, on the conduct-rules question, the council told the board it is preparing a policy on signs at council meetings, which the board read as a sign there was no official rule on Sept. 8. Even so, the board said it could not conclude that asking a resident to lower a sign about a matter no longer under discussion violated the council’s duty to adopt and enforce reasonable rules.
The opinion leaned on earlier board decisions holding that the right to observe a meeting “is not the same as” a right to participate in it.
A different outcome than last month
This is the second compliance board opinion involving the La Plata council this fall, and the first in the town’s favor. In October, the board found two Open Meetings Act violations tied to the council’s Aug. 18 closed session before Mayor James’ censure. The town later asked the board to clarify how it should word future closing statements.
The Nov. 6 opinion covers a separate meeting and a separate issue. The board, made up of Chair Runako Kumbula Allsopp, Karen R. Calmeise and Andrew G. White, issues advisory opinions and cannot impose penalties.
The sign policy the council says it is drafting would put on paper the kind of conduct rule the board said the law requires. Once it is introduced, residents will be able to see what La Plata will allow in its meeting room.
