State lawmakers sent Gov. Charlie Baker a comprehensive post-pandemic bill Tuesday night that allows remote meetings to continue, but it was too late for this week’s scheduled Select Board meeting, which the board canceled abruptly Tuesday afternoon.
The emergency legislation that has allowed town boards and committees to meet remotely expired Tuesday at 12:01 a.m., removing the authorization towns have relied upon for the past 15 months to conduct public meetings virtually. According to the State House News Service, it wasn’t until 8 p.m. Tuesday that the Senate finally approved a measure that would allow remote meetings to continue until April 20, 2022. The House followed 20 minutes later and Gov. Baker was expected to sign the bill into law Wednesday morning.
By then, however, the Select Board had decided to postpone its meeting for a week, until Tuesday, June 22, at 11 a.m. The Press learned of the decision at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, as did subscribers to Harvard’s Town Hall messages.
“Basically we got caught in the state legislative machine,” Select Board Chair Alice von Loesecke told the Press Tuesday afternoon. “We had posted the Zoom meeting … assuming the Legislature would have approved the extension to the emergency ruling allowing remote meetings, once the emergency expired today.” Unfortunately, she said, that did not happen, making the posting illegal as state law reverted to pre-pandemic open meeting rules.
According to the State House News Service, the law awaiting Gov. Baker’s signature Wednesday morning (S2475) “temporarily reinstates remote permissions for representative town meetings, nonprofit member meetings, notary services, and reverse-mortgage loan counseling, along with eviction protections, flexibilities for assisted living residences, and the ability for medical assistants, podiatrists, phlebotomists, and certain military personnel to administer COVID-19 vaccines.”
The bill also contains a provision that would have made last night’s Select Board meeting legal. If the bill is enacted after the emergency ends—as it will be—any remote meetings held in the interim “shall be ratified, validated and confirmed as if this section had been in place,” the bill states.
Postponement of the Select Board meeting delays until next week a number of items on its agenda, including the election of board officers, the filling of more than 60 open committee seats, and a report on the status of Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) funds. Also delayed is a long-awaited report by Victor Normand on the progress made by the Harvard-Devens Jurisdiction Committee in crafting a memorandum of agreement with Ayer, Shirley, MassDevelopment, the Devens Enterprise Commission, and Devens residents and businesses to plan the future of the Devens Regional Enterprise Zone, much of which occupies land that is historically part of Harvard.
The Select Board’s annual strategic planning meeting, scheduled for Wednesday at 9 a.m. on the Hildreth House porch, was posted as a physical meeting so was not affected by the delay in new post-emergency legislation. All other virtual meetings of committees and boards that have been posted at the town website are illegal until the bill is signed.
