show up after this incredible storm that has come through but it does seem to be passing over now so in conversation with patrice garvin the town administrator who actually is here in hiding in the back row waving we were considering what kinds of things were important for people to know and as we move into election season as you know we have three elections coming up and knowing that a very important question will be among the four that are on the ballot in november there are three state questions plus as of last night the board of selectmen voted to add a debt exclusion question on the ballot for belmont high school on the project committee has been working on that so now that we are sort of in that zone between when the question is officially called and the election we decided it was pretty important for people to understand campaign and office of campaign and political finance and  t question what you can do what you cannot do what you can expect and what you cannot expect so we have we asked the o c p if the office of campaign political finance to help us with a bit of training in person and we are joined tonight by jason who'll be speaking nd and then we considered what other items we wanted to make sure that people understood and had an opportunity to have an exchange with our town council about the open meeting law and his latest advisory which came out  so to put all that into context that's why we invited you here this afternoon just so you know the employees also receive the same kind of training on the campaign stuff from three to four and so this is our nd round with that george will start us off this is george hall who is our town council from anderson in creek or the open meeting was but a civically on a recent case by the supreme judicial court and a recent ruling by the attorney general's office in response to a complaint filed here  pertain to the question of what kinds of communications can be made between board members in anticipation of a meeting of a discussion and a meeting  so that the the so the focus is really going to be on the distribution of materials often many boards to send out in addition to the packet of information or have some communications about what's going to be discussed and up and that's really what i want to talk about but i'm happy in the questions to get into other other issues that may be of concern to you  a tightening up of what constitutes a meeting and what constitutes deliberation and prior to the region's the open meeting law few years ago a meeting was defined defined as a corporal convening to be physically together in the same room and deliberation meant a verbal exchange between the members of the committee when they were together in the same deliberation so that the definition of a meeting really just tracks now what a deliberation is and deliberation is any oral or written communication through any medium including e mail  of some material and in anticipation of a meeting including the meeting agenda scheduling information and the distribution of other reports or documents that may be discussed at the meeting provided that no opinion of a member is expressed and that's the i'll return to that phrase in a minute now another concept that was introduced that sort of expanded this idea of what a meeting was is the idea that you could deliberate even with when you don't have a quorum of people through a series of communications that ultimately involves a quorum so on a five member board if member one sends an email to member two forwards it to member three who forwards it the member for now you have never had a corporal convening of a quorum of the board but you've now had a quorum of the board sharing communications on a particular topic and this door was opened in initially by the boston city council which came up with the ingenious idea of having a non quorum of the boston city council meeting in a room and then one person would leave and someone else would come in with a guard and by the door they were very candid with the appeals court that this is what they were doing because they believed it complied with the open meeting law and they managed to arrive at a decision without ever having a quorum in the room and the appeals court basically said you know we're not we're not going to sanction those kinds of tactics we think that's a violation of the open meaning law and then in the follow up decision to that the district attorney versus the w school committee essentially the same thing happening by e mail this is where the concept of of a chain of e mails turning into a deliberation was addressed by the courts saying that's that's not legal either and that actually got incorporated into the statutory definition that i just read to you so in april of this year we had a case in another again involving the the board of selectmen of whale and there is a former selectman and wayland by the name of george harris who files open meeting law complaints more or less and in order to carry out that performance evaluation they actually followed a guidance document that have been published by the attorney general as to how to do it and what they did was each individual member filled out a  evaluation form that they'd agreed in advance and submitted that to the chair and then the chair reviewed the other for evaluation forms prepared his own and then prepared a composite which was a sensually  combination of the five evaluation forms and then sent them to the other members before the public meeting at which in an open session they discussed the performance evaluation so this went up t it's really based on the that underlined section at the in the lower right hand box on that slide they're looking at this provision that says well you're allowed to to distribute other documents but the proviso is that there's there can be no opinion being expressed and i mean a performance evaluation a town a minister is about as opinionated a document as you can have circulated between board members and so the only real response to that was well we think that proviso really only relates back to the communication not to the attached documents and the s j c said that that's a too big a loophole so even attachments to the the e mail that says please come to the meeting on such and such a date that have opinion with it's contained within them may not be circulated prior to the meeting so at the time that this decision was issued there was a pending open meeting law complaint here against the planning board relating to certain meetings of working groups that had taken place in the review of the plan for the belmont a school project and i'll get to the subcommittee question the working group question in a minute but the a g rejected that that part of the complaint but having exhaustively looked at the whole process and looked at the file and looked at the agendas and looked at the documents that were circulated she zeroed in on two documents one was a memo that the chair had written to the rest of the board about a meeting that she and one other member of had with the fire chief which was distributed to the board with the packet for one of its meetings and then most significantly the planning staff had prepared a proposed decision on that in the case on the filing and the chair had reviewed it and made edits to it and that document was then circulated to the full board prior to its meeting to discuss the issuance of a final decision and the a g found that both of those things violated the the rule i've just been discussing the bolter decision as described in the bolter decision and i think that just has very far reaching implications it's pretty easy to see why a performance evaluation you know this is my opinion of how the town town administrator town manager has performed would be something that contains opinion but now we're talking about even making now this is an ag determination is sometimes proved to be wrong about some of these things as she was in the polter case but that's an indication that the a g s office having been perhaps too conservative the st time around is now intends to be fairly aggressive in its view of what constitutes opinion and it really puts the board members and  constraints about what kind of material can be shared in advance of the meeting even when the the topic will be discussed in the open and deliberated on an open meeting only materials that are authored or edited by board members or even potentially affected by these rulings memos and recommendations by staff outside consultants any sorts of outside sources other you know letters from other board members or members of other boards or committees or town officials are not covered by this so when you send out a one to one and your staff sends out a meeting package or the chair sends out a meeting package those don't have to be post well let me let me back up when the bolter case made one accommodation it said that it's ok to circulate something that that includes opinion if you simultaneously make it public by posting it or by and by making it available in the office so as i was just saying only only that only relates to materials authored or edited by board members and it's possible that even some things edited by board members would be considered not to include opinion but at present i think we have to assume that virtually anything that reflects an individual board members judgments or or recommendations  to include opinion so when where a board member has authored or edited a document that is to be discussed in a public meeting i think the best practice in most cases the easiest way to handle this will simply be t include it in the posting with the agenda and it can be put up on the website and that really kind of takes care of that issue one of the things that points i wanted to make in the advisory however and here's where all editorialize a little bit about what i think is the unwise nature of this rule is that there are there are some situations in which i think it's important for a board to try to preserve some kind of deliberate deliberative space for itself and have an opportunity to talk about an important issue or a sensitive issue with each other before it's put out in the public domain in a lot allowing interest groups or you know other people who may want to take shots at that decision to see it and try to preempt or or actually inject interject themselves into the decision process i mean a performance evaluation is actually a pretty good example of a circumstance in which you know the board is charged with evaluating that employee's performance and you don't necessarily before you even get a chance to talk to each other about it want to provide people who have different agendas and not necessarily the public's agenda to see what each board member is thinking and try to head off either an overly complimentary or an overly critical evaluation and there are other examples of this kind of thing too where i think you know it isn't a public hearing public input kind of decision it's a decision that that elected officials are appointed officials are charged with making according to their own best judgment and so you may not want to put an opinion out there on the web page before the boards even have an opportunity to come together to discuss it and the only real options that i think you have in that situation is you can go into the meeting cold you can essentially just put on the agenda that this is what we're going to talk about and the meeting is the point at which members express their opinions to each other for the st time if you're bored that has staff that it has on whom you rely for opinions or recommendations ask the staff to make the opening recommendation and have that be the basis for the discussion of the meeting staff recommendation circulation of a staff recommendation prior to a meeting is not violate the open meeting and doesn't violate bolter in the bolter situation if instead of each individual member filling out an evaluation form and sending it to the chair they had sent it to another person a staff person the h r person the h r person it put together the composite and brought that to the meeting that would not have violated the open meeting so there you can in some cases use somebody off the board to perform that comm pilot function and for things like the preparation of decisions or  reports it may make sense to actually delegate to either an individual or a group of people which would then be a sub committee if the board actually makes that delegation and the sub committee would have to way that's a little less exposed to to interference in the board's deliberative process  so i've had a number of questions about where where this leaves us in terms of document preparation and i think this this puts a lot of pressure on working boards especially working boards that don't have staff  because i know it's a comp and practice here and it's i think it's common practice all over the commonwealth for drafts to be circulated among board members for board members to edit some boards are taking advantage of technologies like google docs or dropbox to to have a document that can be commonly edited by various board members i think based on these decisions that's clearly not compliant with the open meeting law that you're not allowed to do that  and so for that reason i think that the law as it stands creates a strong pressures to assign document preparation to into either to individual board members or to staff members or to in some cases to outside consultants and then bring that recommended decision to the board for discussion but feedback or edits involving multiple board  members have to be carried out in a public meeting and to the extent that a board member has been involved in the preparation of the draft that that has to be either circulated in advance or or shown to the other board members for the st time at that and my job to pm so i don't send them out by e mail before the meeting then are you a member of the board yes ok there's an argument that that doesn't contain your opinion so i don't know for sure based on these decisions that the a g would say minutes are covered by this we'll  to think yeah well let me let me think about that question obviously if they're if their staff if there is that there's a staff person who's prepared the minutes they can be but you can't have people making edits and circulating them prior to the  meeting you know there are other communication issues there has been a widespread practice everywhere to some degree here but in many other places of the kicking off of an agenda item through an email from a board member that says i'd like to discuss such and such a topic at the next meeting and here's why and expressing an opinion and i think a lot of us  just don't respond to that a lot of the other board members don't respond that we don't have a deliberation that's clearly not right even the expression of that opinion and that email could be considered to be an open meeting law violation i've had a number of questions involving you know communications not involving a quorum and this is sort of comes back to the working group element of the of the recent a g decision here it remains the case that discussions among less than a quorum of a board through any mean through by email or or in person is not an open meeting law violation is not subject to the open meeting long as that group has not been formed or charged by the board as a whole with a particular responsibility so spontaneous interaction between board members  board member takes the initiative wants to bring forward to a topic for discussion wants to talk about it with one other member depending on the size of the of the committee could even be several other met members on a large comm there's that's not a problem but if the once the committee certainly if the committee votes to say that this group we want this group of people to go off and talk to each other and come back with a recommendation that vote would be considered by the a g as the formation of a subcommittee and that then becomes a governmental body subject to the open meeting law the clear implication of the a g s decisions on this is that it's safer to if you can a delegate to delegate to one person and you can delegate to one person and that one person could talk to other members of the board again on his or her own initiative as long as it's not a  quorum but once you get to the point where that were the case where the committee as a whole has given a group of people an assignment if you have a governmental body subject to the open meeting  i have some written questions but i'll just throw it open for live ones  yes you can request an agenda item by you can do it by e mail or by phone or an you know any written or oral communication but you can't get into expressing your opinions about the agenda item i think that's probably safe as long as you're not expressed opinion about what you think it's a difficult question to but i think you know obviously the attorney general's office is going to have to be realistic about how proposed agenda items are just are are initiated so i think the best advice i can give you is to be as cryptic about it as possible but that i mean there's somethin to be lots of situations where it's obvious as to why you want to talk about something i think the tougher ones are when something comes to your attention that may be not on anybody else's radar but that are relevant to the board and it may not even be immediately apparent to the other members why it should be relevant to the board and you want to explain why i think we ought to take up this topic and that's something you're going to have to resist doing although you could certainly do it at a meeting itself i mean if there is something on the agenda that that t about the agendas for future meetings you know you can certainly bring up at that time i would like at that at our next meeting for us to discuss this topic and you're free and they're there to post a public meeting to say as much as the one about it rep to the massport community advisory committee and if you have more than three members wouldn't you just could you just e mail your request to the  chair and not to the entire board and with justification for it because typically the chair controls the agenda yes that that's that's right if it is if it doesn't reach a quorum then you can express an opinion as to why supposed to come into a meeting without having read a report and spend thirty minutes reading a twenty five page report well as i said i think in most cases the solution to that is to post it and make it publicly available so that you that you don't have that disability that way you can send it to everybody and everybody can read it i spent probably more time explaining what maybe you can do if there if you have really strong reasons not to to not want to do that but but the solution the s j c is offering here is as long as you contemporaneously post the document when you send it to the other board members for review you're allowed to do it but by posting a document you're posting a document that is the opinion of one person right as opposed to the board but posting it indicates that this is a product of the burra no i agree and so it's but it's not because no one's read it right the you know the public records act exempts from the definition of a public record interagency and interagency policy memoranda sensually opinions going back and forth about what the ultimate decision of board should be that statute recognize that that bo sometimes need the space to arrive at a decision before that decision should be made public this decision undercuts that and in particular it undercuts it only for  boards and committees it doesn't undercut it for staff and that's why it particularly penalizes volunteer government and and citizen self government through you know instead of delegating things to professionals or outside consultants or to staff from from citizens of the town doing things themselves and i'm critical of the rule for that reason i think the legislature should change it for that reason but the way the court has read this this is the step the way the statute is written that's what they're saying the rule is so where are we then in trying to point out that this cripples us and if it's if there's no appealing s decision are we working through our representatives in order to try and make say only way to do it i mean it's kind of difficult to criticize the this jaycee reading of the words of the statute because that in fact is what it says that you can't circulate documents that contain the opinions of members so it's the rule as it's written in the statute that i think is crazy and  really part of a set of revisions to the transparency rules that make it difficult that really create incentives for for towns to start delegating more and more decisions to right so drafts where my big question but then there's also things like minutes where you're just reflecting what has transpired in a meeting things like press releases where you're to just talking about something that has been decided you're not making decisions right you're describing well i i am so jarred frankly by the by the eighty's decision that a draft decision was subject to this prohibition that i don't know where that ends it seems like a draft anything would be subject to that decision i suspect that they would not have a problem with the circulation of minutes that's one person's attempt to faithfully reproduce what was said at the meeting and not express their own opinion that's certainly the argument i would make but i would have made a similar argument with respect to a draft  so i'm urging conservatism but if your job michael smith from the is for a district mission we are responsible to monitor improvements that are proposed throughout the district and so commonly what would happen is that owners might contact t to tell them that they're interested in doing something and then we find out about it and then appoint a couple of people to informally go meet with the owners to kind of discuss what our guidelines are a duties of the staff that you don't have to to communicate with applicants or potential applicants i think it's sort of the next step beyond that where if that then produces an agenda  item that leads to an agenda item and then there's an attempt by those two members to recommend a particular action to the to the board or communicate their opinions about it prior to the meeting where commission as an interested party so that the town could do nothing in response to these letters like it could do with a lot of letters that come across and if so if you have a practice where the chair is simply corresponding with other parties to  inform them of the town's rules or the town's policies or just give their own opinion as chair these are decisions that are coming before the board so you're not there's no deliberation that's really ever  housing production plan and then we put together you know like a thirty slide power point and we walked it around to different groups and the production of that power point involved four of us and we you know shared it via e mail people at a different slides commented if we had done that publicly it could have taken six months right  well i mean to again to the extent that that the committee has made a decision that this reflects a decision by the committee to all those decisions have to be deliberated on and voted on in a public meeting and you know i'm aware that there are all kinds i mean i've served on that served on the green communities and renewable energy commission we we did a renewable energy plan we did we i've worked very much the same way on the kinds of committees that they're not adjudicating things you're recommending things you're communicating about things and i'm i don't know how to reconcile this set of decisions but honestly fair the border bridges stars and i'm going to ask a question which hopefully will allow us to fluff up one issue i learned a new word tonight and a di dime slide each year i have to submit an annual report to the select when telling them what the board of registrars did the chair of every other board had to do the same thing and it's one of the more boring documents you could ever imagine and we have a little template how many people voted have many people didn't vote how many elections were there and what a great job the did and we do this every year but out of courtesy in paris years have always circulated the little template to the other members of the board it's just to be nice in case they want to say well that's really stupid bob you made a typo or change this or i don't think gallon a perfect job i think she did an outstanding job and you know whatever they want to say but to date no there said anything to me i send out the draft and the one response and i've always thought of it is being now that i know the word and anodyne text but i realize now i am circulating to the full board a proposed document which will become part of the town record and although there's not a whole lot of deliberation going into it i'd like to kind of fluff up is that something that sounds and i dined to you or something that we could get into trouble i don't think we could call a meeting i don't think the key here is the content of the document and how much it reflects opinion and not so much as what is the purpose of circulating the the document to the board if it's being discussed and deliberated on i mean i think it's implicit in this that it in to speed some kind of board action so if you're submitting something to if you're circulating something to your fellow board members here's a letter i sent to somebody just f y i because you had the authority to do that individual or you were you were assigned the job of doing it individually then i don't think this covers it because you're not you're not jumping the gun and and  deliberating on something that then will be voted on by the board now if if the if it's a zoning decision or something akin to that where the board has got to come to an agreement through a deliberation process and then vote yes this is our decision then i think you can't do that even if it's ridiculous as whether the town or did it merely a good job or an outstanding job i mean i think that the real difference is what is what is the  as they are so i mean it may be that in a lot of these situations this comes back to the question of of assigning something to one person you know rather than deliberating on it we're just going to say you write it and you send it and we're you know whatever you say we're fine with this law and if there are certain types of communications where that's not you know the board's not taking a big risk because of the nature of the thing tha but the pursuit of excellence in transparency is really getting in the way the good you know let's be practical we saying i hope you're not saying that we can't circulate a set a minute so everybody can read it before the meeting you saying someone can suggest i think i saw today on the agenda because it's a very important matter because of x y and z at ninety nine percent of what all of our boards do  controversial if you look at the decisions that come up i suppose that probably nothing more controversial than the review of a town manager and there's going to be things but let's be practical let's not be paranoid let's continue  to try to run our committees is officially as we can even if we come close to the line i hear you say you want to be conservative that's your job it's our job to get the job done and let's do it as practically as we can thank you define some housing trust can i go back to the question about press release or power point presentation so we've got a committee that's worked for many months on a document and all this liberation has been done properly in public and it's complete a press release describing it or a power point presenting it are not matters of deliberation even if one or two people work on that  n't really represent an action by the committee or it represents execution and decisions that were made previously so i think there are lots of circumstances where  included in the meeting packet so people are aware of it but i think and you know without agreeing or disagreeing with what pub just said if you're asking me  whether distributing a draft press release for comment and having people comment on it or mark it up or you know using google docs or something like that is legal i think the answer is no and if if you've got a quorum of a group of people meeting to work on a document that is not in the decision of the board that you know these three people are going to produce a  powerpoint presentation that group has been assigned the task and they are now a governmental body you pursuant to the open meeting law i think more typically a couple of people will say oh we'll deal with that and then go and deal with that it doesn't need another decision and it's not formally constituted well and we here in belmont and in many other towns living ones where i've served operate in that sort of zone all the time where there isn't a particular decision you have an active group of board members you have people who take initiative you know people and their act but they're actually a g decisions where that's not a subcommittee because the board didn't really assign it to anybody other than one person so i'm i think it's very easy to go from there over the line if you're not mindful of it but a great is a great well and but what is what is is less gray in a good way is that the attorney general and all the court decisions i'm aware of can say it's fine for one volunteer to take something on and it's fine for that one volunteer to consult with other members of the board as long as it's not a court that's really  of meetings in the minutes of the meetings that's nothing more than everything in the meetings has been deliberated so it's just been put in in a in a written form and if it's distributed when it's distributed in the written form what deserves to know why i should have thought more about that question before i got here and it needed to think about it for a minute i think that that's the right answer and and that's what i would say i mean if anybody ever complained that circulation of minutes without and again you could circulate them by we could avoid this issue by putting the draft minutes up on the website with the agenda but if you don't want to do that i would certainly be very comfortable saying to the attorney general that doesn't contain an opinion that is one person's report it's a draft report of the doings of the prior meaning consult the tape it's basically it's pretty it's not it's not intended as an opinion it's not intended as a recommendation and intended as one person's attempt to to report what happened at the meeting i just this is a very area is in flux and i know once a meeting the person draws up the minutes of the meeting it's not their opinions already been deliberate in there when they bring those minutes back to the meeting the is done in an open meeting say ok does everybody agree with what's in these meetings so in is an open meeting before it's drafted after is drafted is this really what we said at the open meeting so i'm not jack thank you george as i sat here and said this is crazy i try to kind of get past that and i want to test my understanding of w work productively albi it perhaps less efficiently so whether it's men meeting minutes or somebodies report we often write now distribute that in advance and ask people to review it which you're saying the fix there is distributed it advance but ask the town clerk to post that publicly it's going to be a whole bunch of stuff presumably that now is posted publicly most of that stuff i don't think people will feel uncomfortable you know that nobody reading it anyway but that's the fix to it that's the fix to avoid having to spend a half hour at them meeting reviewing it and then in terms of soliciting comments which whether it's meetings or reports we often ask people you know here's a draft give me your comments and we'll discuss it at the next meeting sounds like we have to do that in two steps here's the report at the next meeting everybody submit their comments and that report writer then goes back compiles those and at the next meeting presents the compilation so it doesn't preclude us from doing what we did it just expands the time that it takes to do it is that a fair conclusion is that's fair and  at's really exactly what i was trying to say is that i think in most cases nobody's going to be uncomfortable with stamping draft on a document and posting it because it's just not going to be very interesting to anybody and  and you can sure to the extent that boards have staff support you can short cut that because the you could circularly the recommended decision and then individual members could communicate with the staff person in the staff person could prepare a compilation of the comments and bring that to the meeting to move it along a little faster so we could have a whole bunch of extra meetings that is nothing more than five minutes of people submitting their comments we'll get together at berger's and will submit our comments to the person who is drafting right is there a mechanism for people who aren't physically at that meeting to submit their comments and we need to have a quorum of the meeting in order for it to be a meeting but if you have seven people on the committee can you have four people there in a mechanism for the other three to somehow get there that's an interesting question i mean i don't see  follow up on that if you have posted something you know you post the meeting you post the document can't people then submit comments about what was posted or does it have to wait till the meeting mea now you're talking about sort of communications outside of a meeting that deliberation if people are responding to it and you know i suppose we get to the point where we have a of a running series of posts and documents which doesn't seem very practical to me all right so my other question is you know we are very close to this we were party to this latest ruling is is this something that all of the towns are discussing i mean have you heard from other towns because this feels to me crippling and i'm trying to get a sense of would there be some pressure to try and address this at a state level i certainly advised all my other towns of the of these rule of a percent sent the same advisory to the other towns i represent it's early yet also mean again we're aware of this recent ruling in the with on this belmont open meeting law complaint which is more far reaching than just the boulder decision which dealt with performance evaluations which sort of strike everybody is you know median and substantive and ok i can understand why we shouldn't be conducting a performance evaluation that manner but a draft decision on his own in case i saw that and i thought every board in the state does this and we'll see work us lauren meyer historic district commission i have a quick question about communications are going the opposite direction which is when staff create something that they then send to maybe one or two board members to review and check and then those comments go back to staff and then it would be distributed either in a packet or add at a meeting well mostly ok except again this documents i mean again if for some reason you really don't want to say the applicant to be able to read the draft decision before the board even gets a chance to talk about it then your only alternative is is not to share it with any other member of the board prior to the meeting or just get staff recommendation with no board input and then they discuss it admitting that it's a start yes starting point at the meeting but once that documents been so we have co chairs yeah so oftentimes what happens is the staff document goes to the co chairs that that includes the genda and then take the co chairs give feedback back to staff and then it goes out in the packet right and again this is why delegation to one person you have to win yeah i mean even the problem whether you know what one person is a cleaner example the delegation of one person i mean my recommendation to the planning board in the zoning board right now is be assigned the writing of the draft decision to one member and you know then that's going to have to be if you if you're comfortable sending that out with the agenda prior to the meeting fine otherwise they're going to bring it to the meeting and the board is going to have to take a few minutes to read it and review it it seems to me that the as you what you're saying what others have said tonight is the cleanest way to do this is to post the whole meeting packet online as with the agenda right i mean if it's voluminous if you've got three hundred pages of it and two hundred and fifty pages a different document not authored by a board person obviously for practical reasons you would leave that out but it may simply make sense if  meeting packages package is twelve pages long just post it and then it just at one follow up question for designated subcommittees who are working together on a project then there fuses the issue it's a subcommittee words not a subcommittee and like i just said it's a subcommittee if it's been formed by the main board if it is a  spontaneous communication between less than a quorum that the main board has not cho you know directed authorized voted to form that it's not a subcommittee and in belmont it's called the working group and  i would love that for that term to go away but that's what it is ok and following up on the idea of posting comments publicly what it what about a committee to working on the wording of of a policy and for making a google document and making the the read privileges of that google document public then committee members would be able to comment on it and the public would be able to read those comments in advance about posting i think because they realized how crippling this ruling was and they were trying to find some mechanism by which documents could be circulated and they say such as by posting it on the website as long as it's available in the office and that leaves open a whole host of possibilities for technology to fill in more gaps and you just gave one example of them we could have a running discussion we could have a virtual deliberation on the s j c didn't go that far i kind of get the sense they may be reluctant to go very far in that direction without the legislature becoming involved in that and saying it's ok to have like a virtual meeting in writing as long as the public can observe it in real time i mean that's something that thanks if anyone has brought follow up questions that may have been sparked by george's discussion tonight feel free to send them to town clerk at belmont hyphen and a dog up will do our best to sort of field them gather them together and pass them on the next event is jason tate he is from the office of campaign and political finance one of the state offices and now that we have entered ballot question territory and we appreciate you all pain some close attention to what he has to say so i think it'll be easier just to hold this one i hope your questions are easier than the ones you threw in george i'm getting scared up here listen to those but you'll feel free even during even during the talk that we have today if you have a question feel free to raise your hand if we can discuss it other people are probably thinking the same thing i'm jason tate in the communications and education director at the office of campaign and political finance i've tried to teach my kids that  i ask them sometimes you know what is daddy do they can never get all those words correct i just say i'm a government bureaucrat and it's kind of funny i was just in michigan that's right parents live and my mom asked my kid jude you know what his daddy do for a living government bureaucrat sounds ugly but it's easy to say but honestly that's you know what our agency does is we try to and we don't try to we do help your candidates and different political committees in the state to fill out campaign finance reports and get them on our website that's our primary job has anyone heard of o c p f before you came here tonight i see a few hands going up anyone look at our website that can be fun sometimes search through a search through the database and whatnot that's our primary job we have two thousand seven hundred committees reporting with us you're talking about state reps state senators county candidates we have all the statewide people of course we have all mayors across the state as well as city council in cities of sixty five thousand or more like your framingham florence's brockton we have local party committees belmont republicans cambridge democrats and we hope you did you have to file those m one hundred and two forms showing how you raise and spend money under our umbrella there are thousands of of people filing with our office that's what we spend ninety nine percent of our time doing we have a team of auditors on one side of the office at o c p f and they go through about thirty five thousand dollars of those one thousand of those reports each year we also have a roving municipal auditor that person travels all over the state looks at the different reports making sure everybody raises money in within the limits and they're not bring in any business money and these are candidates i'm talking about part of our job go to is also to monitor ballot question committees on the local level in this room here today is anyone interested in forming or have you already formed a ballot question committee i see a hand go up just one hand there there are no limits on how many ballot question committees that can be formed sometimes you know  town they're going to build a new school there's a vote no group vote yes group and that's that's all that happens but in other towns you'll get three or four on each different side because you know maybe one group isn't completely in cahoots with the other group and they want to do different things and that's fine too as many ballot question committees conform here as as they want as you want so we'll get into that a little bit toward the end most of what i'm going to talk about today which is going to last about forty minutes has to do with the three ground rules public employees public buildings and public resources some of you might be thinking you know how does this exactly affect me it's going to be general knowledge and you know as we talk here today you might realize oh wait a nd yeah that rings a bell i've done that or i've not done that you know you know we're mostly talking about ballot question committees here today but many of you are involved in committee or candidate campaigns and so it may be a good tip for you as well i'd just like to mention before i get off this page my boss his name is mike sullivan one of the many mike sullivans in massachusetts politics but probably not the one you're thinking of he's a former city clerk of the newburyport so he gets the local issues and he loves the local issues he likes sent me out here to talk to people but he's been around for quite some time he started the job in one thousand nine hundred and four and he's appointed by the head of the state democratic party the head of the state then republican party the secretary of state who's been galvin the whole time and a  law school dean so those four people get to gether every six years they appoint a director and they have say good luck there's no board there's no commission we don't have to worry about open meeting laws we just he just has to run the campaign finance law for six years and if they want to reappoint him they can and they've done that now four times and he's coming up on his th term here pretty soon so that's the director of o c p f mike sullivan and these are the ground rules public employees public buildings and public resources ninety nine percent of what we do it all c p s is the disclosure portion making sure money raised and money spent is disclosed to the public for them to see i mean you've all seen the stories there may not be a newspaper story in the globe or the herald or these past newspapers just about fundraising we've all read the stories where it says you know charlie baker took fifty thousand dollars from the insurance industry you know reporters are going to our web site to get that information i'm going to show for those of you who haven't looked i'm going to show real quick what our web site looks like this is the front page www dot us sorry for turning my back to you it's just going to be for a moment i'm going to quickly show you the primary reason for why we exist and it's right here search the campaign finance database you can go here and  let's see here the internet there we go and you can do all sorts of things you can look up contributions by donor recipient by occupation by dates i'm just going to do it by town just to show you  some of the things that you can do with the website i mean look at all the other belmont things we're here and you know i just want to see one thousand dollars contributions to a candidate one one thousand dollars is the limit  your ballot question committee that you that you might form the vote yes to vote no there is no limit it's unlimited in fact corporations can give they can't give to candidates unions can give unions can give the candidates but only up to fifteen thousand dollars it's unlimited so if you do for a valid question committee you can know that but this is what people do they'll come here and they'll search you know different types of people from different towns and different resources so this is this is our bread and butter right here our legal department however  deals with a lot of the issues that we're talking about today the ballot question issues in public employee and the public building issues will start with public employees a public employee is anyone who's employed part time or full time but the state county or municipality so obviously i'm a public employee someone who's a police officer firefighter a school teacher they work for the community college these are all people who are public employees but some people are surprised to find out that let's say  appointed to a board in belmont planning board is that elected the planning board now it's appointed and you get a stipend let's say it's four hundred dollars a month are you a public employee in our book we say you are a public employee and you have to follow the rules invite all the neighbors the candidate was going to show up and she put out an invitation she worked at a private for a private organization she was in a public group of employ in that case but she received like a two hundred dollars stipend per year someone complained against her and we said yeah that's a violation you're a public employee and you had a fundraiser in your home so those are the things you want to look out for whether you're doing the ballot question fund raising or maybe you're involved with a state rep race or a selective school committee these different things so public employees one of the rules gotta stay away you have to stay away from the money public employees are prohibited from soliciting a receiving campaign contributions directly or indirectly that language is in the statute that's in effect two hundred and forty seven nationwide  she asked whether or not you know if someone was on a board and they don't receive a stipend are they a public employee not not according to our statute that person may be a public employee according to other statutes but it's far as section thirteen that's what we call the section thirteen as far as this isn't i concerned not a public employee they can solicit or receive so the if this prohibition is in effect two hundred and forty seven with iran your couch or whether you're in the office and nationwide i was asked to ask people to come to the mike if you're going to ask a question sorry nation why was that let's come up with a crazy scenario someone from belmont runs for president let's say you're a you're a your school teacher in town can you be involved and have a fundraiser for that candidate now because it's the prohibitions on any political fund raising public employees are prohibited from doing any fund raising for any political purpose two hundred and forty seven nationwide ok she's coming on down we're going to get into some of the details now just so you can kind of get a feel yes that imply if you're retired public employee who gets a public pension no retired public employees can solicit or receive so you have to be employed and compensated we have another one yes public employees cannot solicit cannot receive but they can donate yes if you have any direct questions about that and forty seven public employees can you please ask them we do we will talk about these other issues coming up can you help organize an event or can you not even be involved in the organization of a fundraising event for a fundraising event no you should be a part of the organization of it ok so let's get into some examples now and then i'll ask at the very end of the public employee portion if there are any more questions so some examples of the statute says cannot solicit or receive what is received mean that's the actual physical receipt of a campaign contribution we had a case in the south shore not too long ago where a guy was running for city council it's a right same rules that you apply to you guys whether it's ballot question or selectman or school committee or whatever but he was having an event at a restaurant and for those of you who are involved with campaign finance you know you have to get the name and address of every dollar from dollar one all the way up to a one thousand or four ballot questions you know infinity so at these events if you've ever been to them sometimes the lines can get pretty long because there's volunteers frantically taking down names and addresses if it's two hundred dollars or more occupation employer and then taking the contribution the check the candidate was getting nervous at this event because there's a long line he wanted to get the party started so he goes up to his wife and says can you please sit down and start to take some of these checks and names and addresses no problem she sits down and starts taking on well apparently there was someone at the event who was there but not a friend of the candidate saw her doing it and knew that she worked two towns over part time for the d p w they called our office and our general counsel said that's a violation that's a violation of section thirteen because it's a public employee receiving campaign contributions so if you have your political event i guess the bottom line is you know make sure the that your you know your cousin who happens to work at the community college isn't there isn't the person they're collecting the checks so that's the receipt do we get a lot of cases on this no we get complaints constantly pouring into our office we don't get a lot of these probably happen but maybe people just aren't too eager to file complaints but this the solicitation this is where we get all our complaints and you'll see why it's very easy to trip up on this on this portion of the campaign finance law i mean for a scenario let's say that it's your part of the vote yes group you want to build the new high school everyone's energized you meet every wednesday night and someone's kitchen you know two thousand and thirty people there sometimes you're getting signs ready sometimes you're stuffing envelopes well tonight you know that the fundraisers coming up in a week the twenty dollars a head backyard fundraiser and the person who's in charge of the vote yes committee looks at the r s v p lessons that half of these people haven't even r s v p let alone bought tickets all right everybody grab your cell phones we're going to call the other half of this list well you know the teacher who's involved in the superintendent who happens to be there the school superintendent maybe the police officer they're going to have to say sorry can't do it tonight we're public employees we can't make these fundraising phone calls let alone you know maybe sell tickets to go to a twenty dollar fundraiser can't do that soliciting and receiving other examples social media this is really ground zero i mean this law was written the eight hundred when they were still figuring out light bulbs and whatnot let alone social media but our offices had to sort of evolve over time and come up with ruined rulings and it's pretty cut and dry actually it wasn't too difficult to determine that soliciting and receiving on social media is also a problem i mean for example you can just imagine let's say it's  maybe late october and you know i'm a belmont police officer and i'm involved in the vote yes committee which is fine i can be involved and i sit down at halftime maybe during the patriots game i open my private laptop call up my private  facebook page and i say you know hey you know we really need to get this new high school for the children the vote yes committee is having a last minute fundraiser for their for their last minute get out the vote push it's friday night thirty dollars ahead i hope to see everybody there i post that to my private facebook page is that wrong yes i'm a public employee and i solicited by posting that to a facebook page and we get these sorts of complaints all the time what happens is someone will see that your so called friend on faceb they'll copy and paste it put it in an email zip it off the o c p f and our legal team will have an easy job determining that that's a prohibition that's prohibited the problem is they also when they make their complaint they see see that very e mail to the local newspaper and the local newspaper gets it now they've got a story vote yes group violates campaign finance law and they're going to give me a call i'm a communications director i have to chat with them about it and that's kind of what we're doing here today is to try and  educate you on the rules so that hopefully you can avoid some of those negative situations i was i was asked to ask people to come down to the mike if you want to talk this is the invitation there's going to be singing in a town choir the mayor and school superintendent will be there with dessert and a band in the c e o will be there with the police chief twenty bucks anyone see any issues with this see if you had going up and down i mean this is going to be a red flag for for our attorneys as soon as they see a school superintendent even though is that person is not mentioned by name we still say that's a public employee who's involved with solicitation twenty dollars we would call this an illegal event a prohibited event because money was being is being raised through a prohibited fashion because of public employees also the police chief we don't care about them their elected officials are exempt so the school committee members out there a lot of times in my experience when i go around cities and towns lot of times a school committee members of the elected officials who can really help get these vote yes committees going or you know perhaps an elected officials in the vote no side they want they can get that they can do it they can solicit or receive a lette officials can say we have no problem with that we hate these by the way because we feel kind of mean when we say have to cancel the event or you know if you've already had it you have to give the money back so you know we just urge caution if you're going to do that yes you know if the superintendent he doesn't care about the community likes the music he's going to music so how much of that is donated and how much is it to pay for the services he's getting we would just say that because his name is tied into a fund raiser as a draw to the event that that would be prohibited by section thirteen whether he likes the music or not all right so you know belmont i was driving around in between sessions and you know a lot of nice houses here and there let's say someone's involved in the vote yes group in there like you know what i want to have a fundraiser right here at my house that's fine they can do that unless they're a public employee if they're a public employee they cannot have a fundraiser at their home we do sometimes get this question ok i do have the nice house i work for a bank my husband works for you mass but i want to have a fundraiser can i have the fundraiser yes you can have the fundraiser your home with the you mass employee should we shouldn't be there are our lawyers put that down in writing in an a o saying that the public employees spouse or the public employee spouse should not be there what's next public employees cannot be treasures of political committees so if you're going to form that committee to vote yes to vote no committee make sure it's not a public employee as treasurer elected officials are example we've already talked about this i mean i'm sure you've seen governor baker you know out there soliciting funds that's fine they can do that asked questions of public employees at all i'm a schoolteacher by trade i'm not working currently because i'm home with my kids but i keep myself on a few different communities substitute lists are office substitute teachers who are on the active list are public employees and cannot solicit or receive noted thank you so i'm interested in your definition of public employee the federal employees that they cover when you say they're not a one hundred of them are statute are statute only cover state county and municipal but it's my understanding that the federal government does have similar laws not telling us what happens to us if we were the law and we nor would you recommendation i save that for the end so i don't scare you oh no i do actually save it for the end it's a criminal statute if you look through the campaign finance law the scary language about jail time in these massive fines but don't be nervous we we usually resolve something through a public resolution letter process i'll get to that about twenty minutes  want to clarify what you said about public employees verses elected officials like a school committee member and in public employee and school committee member i assume that the rules for public employees know ok i'm a public employee and i'm running for state rep i know i can't sell this to receive campaign contributions but i should at least be able to do it for myself right that legislation is never passed so it's one of those frustrating things as a public employee who runs for office you still cannot solicitor receive contributions even for your own campaign so under public buildings now it's similar to public employees that there's just a ban there is a ban on soliciting a receiving in buildings used for governmental purposes those are your town halls your schools public libraries community college buildings these are all public buildings and money can exchange hands the whole the whole purpose here is to sort of protect the public employees i mean you can imagine maybe a superintendent walking around a school and demanding money from teachers for the vote yes committee i mean that would that would not do good so this last sort of protection that never happens but it sort of protects people from that it actually goes back into you know the older times when a mayor would actually do that march around city hall and demand money for his his or her campaign so you know how does this really apply to you it really comes down to invitations if you're involved in the campaign ballot question candidate  be careful where you send your invitations i mean i do have one example here an e mail if you can read it it's an e mail to someone who works for the lynn school department and it's from a campaign because this guy george good he signed up for a campaign he didn't use his private email address he used his government e mail address so committees do what they do and they sent an e mail back to him but i asked for money this is a solicitation that we consider going into a government building and prohibited  it's more likely that you'll see something perhaps your vote yes committee is finally it's geared up or your vote no i should go both ways your vote no committee says ok it's time to send out our invitations we have our list of thirty  you know on the chair this thing you know would be good is if we invited the state going to go with vote yes we invited the state wrap and we invited the police chief as well as a state senator three people show up at a show support for the vote yes  group you know volunteer number two can you send those invitations to those three people sure volunteer number two thinks police station school department state house those are all government buildings in these invitations are going into government buildings that's prohibited  invitation should not go into government buildings they should go to private residences they should go to businesses to to seek invitations to the ballot question committee one example just one last example she sort of get a feel  of what it means to not solicit or receive in a government building we had a case once where i think it was a can and i'm going to call it a ballot question committee where a ballot question committee took some literature went to the library and you know how it each public library they have that table where there's all the free literature and all that stuff they plop it down on that table and they walked out with someone who was savvy to the campaign finance law walked up took a look at it and there was talk about the issues of voting yes for a for a school building project on the said to donate send a check to this address that's a solicitation that is now into government building and so they filed a complaint with the p f we said that is a violation but if that same person who dropped off the literature had been standing on the front steps of the library and just handed it to people as they walked out we have no problem with that because it's outside the four walls it's still government property but it's outside the four walls so we're not concerned about the fund raising there so that's government buildings and the last questions on that right moving right along this is the meat of it now this is really why i'm here today is for the public resources portion of it most of what i'm going to tell you moving forward it stems from from two sources one is this court case that you see right here anderson versus the city of boston goes back to the seventy's and which the city of boston said we're going to spend a one million dollars to support a ballot question had to do with property tax taxes and what not but there are some people in town  residents who said hey that's not fair those are my those are my dollars my tax money and you're going to use it to support a question that i oppose and the court sided with the taxpayers they said it is that commute that governments are prohibited from using public resources for campaign purposes and from that court decision and from a half of a sentence in the campaign finance law we've developed these rules on prohibitions on the use of public resources for campaign purposes and so will this get into those right now what are public resources it's anything that's paid for by the taxpayer so you talk about employee time copiers vehicles could the school the school department i assume has a pickup truck or some sort of a vehicle can they drive around town and help to vote yes group putting up vote yes signs no that's the use of a vehicle and employ time for a campaign purpose so that's just an example when it comes to the use of public resources there are exceptions so we're going to go into the exceptions we're going to talk about what's actually prohibited right now though we're going to talk about what really makes something a prohibited use of public resources and the primary thing is distribution i mean you see the newsletter there the newsletter probably goes out from the school department every month talking about all sorts of different things fundraisers and academics and things like that well belmont now has this big high school project going on in the superintendent right  article and just talks about the issues in this newsletter and then blasted out to the parent e mail list see a couple has gone up a couple has gone sideways no it's distributed so it's a public resource being used to distribute information involving a campaign issue so we could say no the school department could not do that we've had school departments who just straight up just take make postcards and send postcards to the whole community saying vote yes that is definitely the use of public resources for a campaign purpose and then you know the classic is you know it's maybe october we're getting close to the november of zero people are starting to get nervous and so the school's principal sits down and types out a flyer that says you know vote yes for the new high school it's for the children's future makes a one thousand copies folds and gives the teachers to put in the backpacks for the kids to take home that's prohibited that's the use of time money printing ink for a campaign purpose and prohibited that's those are the kind of things we're looking at the member of the warren committee and the one committee and by the by laws of the town has an obligation to advise the town meeting the town meeting is going to vote on the same debt bonding issue as the as the debt exclusion presumably the warren committee will produce a report with a recommendation either for i hope that perhaps even against the school project  then exclusion that's a public document presumably the vote yes other vote no committee can seize that document and circulate it as a campaign or refer to it i hope they can what do you say for something like that where there's a special statute perhaps to distribute these warrant articles that is permitted we've had that issue come up in the past where town meeting is required to push out information for a vote anderson would not affect that this anderson prohibition on public resources that would be ok it would be distributed by the campaign but they  which is against the law now they mailed out a one thousand pieces you can bring most one thousand pieces back you go back you tell me shouldn't do that so he doesn't do it anymore but he's already got the damages done yet that's when our legal team gets involved and comes up with some sort of a saddle meant to resolve it to resolve the cases there are all sorts of different types of resolutions which i'll get at the end how to resolve cases i should mention other on distribution and you know your question sort of reminded me of this there is a somewhat new statute in the law that will allow a community to send out information to everyone in the community if your legislative body adopts the provisions of this section it's chapter fifty three section eighteen b the long list of provisions but if your legislative body your select men are alderman whatever is here if they do accept those provisions then a town wide mailing can happen so if your town council wants to look at that they can i'm looking now at an e mail there's a there's a public email from john snow a public school and a dot edu and he blasted out this e mail hey we are talking about the ballot question last night and i promise to send you the contact list here it is please call these people and ask them to vote yes on the question so this is an eager town employ who just sent this out and we would have an issue with it it only went to two people but it's still the use of public resources for a campaign purpose by sending out the e mail a public employee can do that on their own time using their own g mail account or yahoo account if they want but not using the school email account what can public employees do i've been telling you what everybody can't do this whole time and probably feels like beating a little bit but there's a lot there is there are some things that public officials can do i mean they can they can give public employees can give public anybody can give to a political committee in this case saul goodman he's a he's a law professor at a university public university gave a one thousand dollars that's ok so school officials and public employees can go they can hold signs vote yes signs vote no signs and whether you're on a board or you're a school committee member or a school teacher you can hold signs if you're the school teacher don't do it during the school day obviously you can do it on your own time but you can hold signs you can take a position on a ballot question your public officials here in belmont can have an opinion on whether or not they think a new school is ok or  not and they can have that opinion and they can share with people verbal even on their own time they can do it even during the workday if someone strikes up a conversation with them we get this question a lot especially around the school questions  i've actually received this complaint i was picking up my kid at school and there was a i heard a teacher talking to some parents about this the upcoming ballot question for the new school and saying that they should vote for is that ok you know just casual conversations like that our office isn't going to say that's prohibited or you legal even if it's happening there at the school pick up line or anything conversations pop up from time to time the sort of thing we wouldn't want to see however is for maybe a line of teachers to be standing there and you know you know saying hey thanks for taking make sure you vote yes make sure you vote yes that would be an issue or maybe the teachers inside the classroom they have these kids you know the thirty kids they're not handing them literature but they say hey kids you know when you go home tonight tell your parents to vote yes we would want to see that kind of stuff you know so it's just something to look out for was that i wouldn't if i were a teacher he asked can the teacher just tell them to vote you know tell your parents to vote i wouldn't do that there are times when a town can put out an announcement our office has said it's ok for the school superintendent you know the the call system they used to cancel school for snow and what not use that system to say the school building vote is november th so like this is november th polls are open from this hour to this hour boom that's it and just leave it at that we say that's ok if your town ever wants to do that i don't see the school superintendent here tonight but if your town ever wants to do that they should also consult ethics because the ethics commission which is two floors above us it's completely separate and they have a few different rules and they may prohibit that sort of thing and in fact if you want to do that i would suggest that the school officials or town officials run the script past one of our attorneys so that we can give the green light of the red light on it moving on this is social media this is a facebook post there's a public employee and they're posting as many of you know the vote for the new school is this tuesday please vote yes trust me we needed public employee school teacher do that we say yes it's our own private facebook account on our own computer and no money is being solicited so that kind of stuff is ok at a ten p t o meetings to discuss ballot questions on your own time public employees can do that public officials can do that on their on their own time in fact you know the school superintendent it's within his scope of responsibility to be totally on top of the school building issue has to put out an analysis you know needs to keep on top of it even communicate with the with the with the community he can go during the day and even go to a meeting let's see the lions club or past the nice lions club over here once this afternoon let's say the lions pub invites him to come and talk about the issue he can do that even during the school days because it's under his scope of responsibility the police chief though should not the school building projects not under his scope of responsibility the teachers should not it's not under their scope of responsibility and analyze an impact of a ballot question so i'm assuming right now the school department's back there analyzing numbers and the assessors doing the same in the trying to get all this information on what happens if this passes what happens if it doesn't pass will accreditation be affected all these different things they can spend public money public resources to analyze that that's fine they can even put out a report you know a twenty page report showing you know the pros the cons all sorts of different things and they can produce that and have that available there at their office that is ok the key though is distribution let's say they make that report and then the superintendent says you know what let's make five thousand dollars of those and we'll go door to door and pass them out you know that would be the use of public resources to distribute in from but creating the analysis is not a problem let's say at some point in the future the town administrator says you know what we just need to have a town meeting in fact we're going to have it in the high school so it's really hot in there and people are going to want to vote yes and and there are going to be you know five hundred people there they called my office can we make five hundred copies of our analysis and give it to the five hundred people who are in attendance yes that's fine but if you make five thousand and say everyone you know grab an extra big stack in past months your neighbors would say that's it that's prohibited speaking to the press your public officials in town can speak to the press about this issue  what about the website you know towns have websites schools have websites we have some there's a school in from there's a school website right here is click for information about the november th ballot question election that's ok we'd say that that's ok if i'm a resident of belmont i'm not getting into any information from the school department because prohibited but you know i don't really know which way to vote but i want my taxes to go up that we really need a new high school i might go to the school website to look for information that's me actively going in it which is different from distribution so we say that this is ok but there are limits however and by the way the information can have the analysis can maybe have letters of recommendation from the school building authority or whatever they want to put up their building plans we would like though this is a school website that says vote yes on november th for the override that's that's politics that's a campaign right there and we'd say no that's the use of public resources for a campaign you know your school officials can of appear on local public television so if you see him on there it's the middle of the school day don't file a complaint because it's ok they can be there equal access some of you you know your elected officials in town i saw a lot of hands go up i mean you know the senior senator everyone knows you want to go to the senior center and you want to bring coffee and donuts and shake hands ask for votes your state reps do it your state senators is that ok that's a public resource that's a senior center it's a public resource and you're doing politicking is that ok we say it's ok so long as equal access is granted if one candidate can do it if one vote yes committee can do it one vote no committee can do it then everybody should have equal access to that facility i have bernie sanders up there because during the presidential election i got a call and  to file a complaint against bernie sanders i said ok what's the deal he's in a you mass building that's a picture of him at the u mass building and he's asking for votes this is politics and that's a public resource we said it's ok so long as donald trump and hillary clinton can have equal access to i guess another question was say you're in a class or something and someone in the class is working for a candidate are a position they allowed to discuss years but to really be a pilot in politics about it is that permissible yeah i would say that there's no prohibition on our level for that i mean it might generate complaints and you know bad feelings but  as if they're just discussing it in a class i would not be an issue for us i think you also said earlier that someone is outside the center and is passing on things doing things out of the building you said that was permissible is question sometimes you know hey you know selectman john smith he has his signs up at the senior center in the lawn you know my from my st question would be well you know call the you know call the building administrator there are signs allowed there and if they are everyone can put their the ballot question committee issue i know you only saw one hand for a vote yes ballot question by assume some of you may get involved in the vote no vote yes ballot question committees it's real simple to form to form a ballot question committee there's a form called the m one a one someone fills it out there's a treasure and a chair person you need to you can have more you hand it into the town clerk and you're in business if you're going to solicit or receive money committees do you do need to have a bank account it's my understanding that most banks requir i number that you can get from the i r s online so if you do open up that bank account you'll probably need that number and your committee can begin to raise and spend money these committees are required to keep very good records the name and address of every dollar received from dollar one up to one thousand for local ballot questions we sometimes have problems because you know you're going to go to an event of someone's home and maybe someone puts like a fishbowl down and just says you know please donate people just going in fives and tens that doesn't work because of their anonymous contributions someone needs to be there to collect the name and address the same occupation and employer rules apply as well name occupation employer for contributions of two hundred or more must be collected it's a good idea just to get name address occupation employer for everybody just to just to be safe there are no limits on how much can be given to your ballot question corporations can give even though they're strictly prohibited from giving to candidates and unions can give any any any entity can give even a political committee there are two hundred and fifty pacs in the state maybe one of them is aligned with you or with your with your groups they can give money to a ballot question committee so it's a it's a matter of collecting the money keeping good records and then filing the reports so here in belmont the st campaign finance report where everybody in town is going to find out who gave to which group is due eight days before the election so the ballot question committee will file that report eight days before the  election it's going to be a public document you'll probably have to come in to see it the state law does require that report to be posted to the web site if it's a one thousand dollars more in activity within thirty days so it might even be after the election but eventually  web site right she did do the same day ellen was saying that she post those things the same day so you'll be able to look on the website to see these reports and then there's a report due thirty days afterward just to kind of show the money that was spent right before the election and raised and then sort of the closing documents once the ballot question is closed out it's over and if there if there's another question the future a new committee will have to be formed that's really i mean there's not really a lot for ballot question committees to know because it really comes down to just being a reporting situation yes not uncommon for people to donate money anonymously to many political items you know with own a name or particularly are giving your committee you'll be able to reach out to me is that hey we never got your occupation employer maybe you even know it you know doctor at this hospital the law does require your committee to reach out to that person in writing to ask for the occupation an or an email to that individual asking for it once you've sent that letter you comply with the law and you can keep the money even if they never respond to you but like i said it's in a small community you're probably going to know most of the people so resolving cases this is not to scare you in fact in the end i think i'd make a point that we're not a gotcha agency but i think feel like i do need to explain you know how to resolve these things for your ballot question committees they have to file the report on time eight days before the election thirty days afterwards or else are subject to the possibility of twenty five dollars a day fines but mostly i want to talk about how we resolve cases because we get complaints every day every day especially now in this time of year we get a couple every day that are coming in our office does not want to and can't possibly take everybody to court for these campaign finance violations so we have a system we that we call public resolution letter system that allows us to settle all these cases in an informal fashion and so everyone can just move on with their lives i'm going to turn my back again to you again i apologize i'm going to go back to our web site and hope the internet works let's see here we had some problems in the earlier session it's spinning and it's frozen  on the website we have an agency actions page there we go i'm going to go here to legal i'm going here to agency actions this is a public website anyone can go here the agency action page lists our agency actions how we resolve cases the st list you're going to see here is for public resolution letters or we have a bunch of them every year simple matters like the school teacher who sold ten tickets to the fundraiser for the vote yes or maybe a selectman in town mistakenly took a check from an l l c because it's brother in law owns the l c d didn't think oh this is a corporation like little issues like that it's our way to resolve the issues it's a way to for our us to resolve the issues in both parties can taken some sort of action now we're moving on if it's a more serious issue like a disposition agreement a more serious issue we do it's called a disposition agreement this is an agreement that says ok mistakes were made big mistakes we need to resolve this thing to hide the true source of the funds so let's say like the vote no group is here in town they don't want the high school and you know there are sort of maybe negative connotations with being involved at the no group is i don't want the new high school but you know what my property taxes are really high i own a business i'm going to have to lay off five people if you know so i don't want my name out there but i also don't want my taxes to go up so i take a bunch of money from my corporation and i give it to a nonprofit that i'm friendly with and the nonprofit gives it to maybe it's  taxpayer's nonprofit or something and they give it to the ballot question so the public when when ellen post it to the website it's going to say nonprofit twenty thousand dollars to vote no committee hiding the true source the actual businessman that's what most of th stuff is right here the dark money cases and so those usually come with a large much larger payment finally our office can refer a case to the attorney general's office for criminal charges i'm going to point to just four of them here and mention just well he's he served the most time in jail for a campaign finance violation for two and a half years but he did something serious he was hurting for money personally and there was a pot of gold there his campaign fund in the storm more than one hundred thousand dollars so he ended up doing two and a half years but the point of mentioning this is not to scare you but there to remind you we have two thousand seven hundred committees organized with us untold thousands on the municipal level i can point to just a few where we went to court our job is to help you if you're going to be involved in politics this ballot question or maybe in the future state rep or a senate selectman school committee please use us as a resource call us run your questions past us and we'll even reply to you by email our job is to help you so  please do so and good luck on your election this fall any final questions you know you can please come forward and use the mike to ask them i see at least one person coming did you have something  ok the trifle that i gave you the little yellow trifold ok she's not going to ask a question has all the contact information on there so if you do need to contact us please feel free to do so on if there are no more questions or you didn't want to ask it in public feel free to come up to me afterward and thank you for coming you have any last words thanks for