Dueling Opinions – Which Attorney is Right?
“They shouldn’t vote, they’re not supposed to,” Borough Attorney Peg Schaffer said at this week’s Atlantic Highlands borough council meeting
Her response was to the question whether it’s necessary for a commissioner to attend a meeting in order to vote to approve minutes of that meeting at the next meeting.
Certainly makes sense, and it’s no surprise that Ms Schaffer’s answer means just that. After all, how can someone put their name down saying the minutes are true and accurate if he or she wasn’t there to attend the meeting?
Perhaps it’s possible if the absentee actually listens to a recording of that meeting or watches a video of it on line some where. But even then, recordings don’t always capture everything and videos might not be complete. Besides, if minutes are a formal and accepted proof of something that happened at a meeting, shouldn’t the absentee voter also have to swear he really listened to the whole meeting before voting on it?
There’s no doubt things are done correctly at the Borough Council meetings; Ms Schaffer is a stickler for not only knowing but doing the right thing.
But the Harbor Commission attorney gave a different opinion to the harbor commissioners at their meeting last week. In response to a question from resident Mark Fisher, who nobody doubts knows what ‘s going on at every municipal meeting, Commission attorney Gregory Cannon said it’s okay for an absentee member to approve minutes he was not present to hear. They’re just approving it as an official record, he said. HUH?
So the question was asked at the council meeting simply to learn whether minutes are going to be kept in different ways by different municipal boards.
Ms Schaffer could set the record straight right away and even give exceptions to it. She explained that the planning board members, for example, have a rule that enables a member who has not heard the full application for a variance application, to vote on the application when it is ready for a vote. But, she added, in order to do that, the member must also sign that he has heard a recording of the entire application.
When it was explained that another attorney had said voting when absent was ok in a specific incident, Attorney Schaffer simply said, “in my opinion, she should not have voted at the meeting.”
Nevertheless, Schaffer said to be certain she might “call and find out”: whether she is in error, and will “report at the next meeting.”Opinions …
