An earlier prohibition on town officials participating in LincolnTalk for fear of open Meeting Law violations has been loosened and clarified by Town Counsel Joel Bard.
Planning Board members were advised at their April 16 meeting that they were no longer allowed to post emails to LincolnTalk or even subscribe to the listserv. Director of Planning and Land Use Paula Vaughn-MacKenzie said this was the advice of Town Counsel Joel Bard and accompanied a recent public records request by resident Barbara Peskin for emails and other communications relating to the March 23 Town Meeting.
“The one-sentence summary is that town officials may participate and post on social media, but they must avoid any discussions or ‘deliberations’ with fellow board members and should limit their posts to simple factual points,” Town Administrator Tim Higgins told the Select Board on April 29.
Board and committee members may post information about meeting schedules and other basic administrative matters on LincolnTalk as well as basic factual information, including offering corrections to misstatements, Higgins wrote in a memo to the Select Board, which makes reference to the Attorney General’s Office FAQs on the Open Meeting Law. However, they may not post a response to the posting of another member, “as doing so risks becoming a deliberation outside the confines of a properly convened public meeting,” and they also may not use LincolnTalk to “engage in debate with fellow board members or the public.”
“‘Deliberation’ is defined broadly,” Higgins said at the meeting. “If we start to respond to one another’s posts or even respond to a post by a resident other than to clarify basic factual information, it’s a slippery slope, and [Bard] has seen a number of clients slide down that slope.”
At the heart of the matter is that LincolnTalk should not be viewed by residents as a primary information source about town government. “Lincoln Talk has a limited place among the town’s communication and outreach strategies. It is not the primary vehicle through which the town communicates with its residents. Residents who post questions or concerns to LincolnTalk should not expect that a town official will be responding,” Higgins’s memo notes.
Instead, residents who have questions should contact the relevant department listed on the town website (hover your mouse over the Government link at the top of the page). Those who aren’t sure where to start may contact the Town Administrator’s Office.
“My takeaway is that there’s frustration on this side of the table that more folks don’t reach out directly to us,” Higgins said. “LincolnTalk is valuable in its own way but it’s not an official communications vehicle for the town.” There is no staff member whose job includes monitoring LincolnTalk, “and none of us is authorized to respond on behalf of the town in an official way” on that platform.
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