The Select Board found Tuesday night, April 15, that an Open Meeting Law complaint filed by a former member against SusanMary Redinger, the current chair, was without merit.
The complaint was filed by Rich Maiore on March 25, shortly before he resigned from the board, alleging that Redinger had violated the Open Meeting Law in her handling of an unresolved code of conduct complaint he had brought to her attention March 17.
The vote to reject Maiore’s allegation was 3-0, with Redinger abstaining. But in rejecting the complaint, Redinger, joined by speakers in public comment, thought it necessary to also reveal details of Maiore’s original code of conduct complaint, some of which had become public and rumors of which were threatening the candidacy of Eve Wittenberg for a seat on the Select Board.
“I wasn’t planning to address the code of conduct complaint this evening because it’s independent of the OML complaint,” Redinger told her colleagues, reading from a prepared statement. “However, I have heard that most, if not all, of the confidential information surrounding the complaint has already been leaked, and I’d like to make sure people have the facts.”
According to Redinger as well as Wittenberg, who also spoke Tuesday evening, Maiore filed his complaint after learning that Wittenberg had made comments to a town employee that were received as hurtful. Redinger said that after receiving Maiore’s original complaint about the incident she had met with the town administrator and the assistant town administrator/HR director because a town employee was involved and because the complaint had been filed by a third party who was not present at the time of the incident.
“The policy was unclear, at least to us, about how to handle this incident,” Redinger said. So she did what she had observed other chairs do when handling similar complaints. “I confirmed with past chairs, Stu Sklar and Alice von Loesecke, that they typically handled complaints themselves by finding out what happened and speaking to the individuals involved.” She also checked emails between herself and Maiore about a similar complaint she had filed against a previous town employee, which, she said, he handled in the same manner, an assertion the Press was unable to verify in time for this week’s paper.
Redinger told the board she then spoke with “the person named in the complaint” who told her they were truly sorry about making the remarks and had apologized both at the time, and later in writing. “They realized that their comments were inappropriate and promised to follow the code of conduct moving forward,” Redinger said “I also learned from the employee’s manager that the employee was satisfied with the apology and considered the matter resolved.” In fact, Redinger reported, the employee objected to having the matter escalated at all. “At that point I considered the matter resolved.”
Redinger told Maiore of her actions on March 19; six days later he filed an open meeting law complaint, saying she had not followed proper procedure.
Redinger says she then consulted with Town Counsel Mark Lanza, who could find no such violation. On Lanza’s advice she asked Maiore “which provision of MGL 30A sections 18-25 of Massachusetts General Law were violated by my actions.” Redinger said that as of Tuesday night, Maiore had not responded nor had he withdrawn his complaint.
Attorney General will decide
In a letter to Maiore the following morning, April 16, Redinger wrote on behalf of the board that the allegations in his complaint—even if true—did not constitute a violation of the Open Meeting Law. “The Board’s Code of Conduct is not subject to enforcement under the Open Meeting Law,” she wrote.
Maiore insisted, however, in response to a request for comment by the Press, that Redinger had not followed policy for addressing code of conduct violations. “Town Counsel has confirmed this,” he said. “The State Attorney General’s Office will make the final determination based on the facts.”
“The larger issue is transparency,” Maiore added. “When a town volunteer is found to be abusive or disrespectful to a town employee or fellow volunteer, should the town know about it? I believe they should. It ensures accountability and builds trust. I encourage residents to weigh in on this.”
The backstory
At the Tuesday night’s meeting, however, Wittenberg acknowledged during public comment that she was the person cited by Maiore in his code of conduct complaint and that Redinger’s handling of it had led to Maiore’s OML complaint. “I want to lay out some of the information that is the backstory to hopefully be more transparent,” she said.
In early February, Wittenberg said, she had made statements to a town employee “that were received as both rude and offensive.” She said that following the encounter she had realized her words “had been sloppy, that they had not been thoughtful, and that they did not in any way meet my standards of professionalism. So I apologized to the person … I took ownership for what I had said and for the hurt that I had caused to that person and I was really appreciative that we could move on.”
No code of conduct violation was filed at the time, so she was surprised, she said, when Maiore, who had learned of the encounter secondhand, f iled his complaint a month later. After her meetings with Redinger and Assistant Town Administrator Allyson Mitchell, she thought the matter had been resolved. So she was surprised by Maiore’s OML complaint.
Former Select Board member Stu Sklar, speaking during public comment, said he was “shocked and appalled” by Maiore’s actions. He accused Maiore of trying to “take an isolated incident, of which he had no firsthand knowledge, and concoct a narrative of some great wrongdoing.”
Sklar continued, “This committee has much more important things to do than discuss an Open Meeting Law complaint based upon a frivolous code of conduct violation three weeks before Annual Town Meeting. … I hope the Select Board takes this for what it is, a cheap political stunt.”
Redinger, in her remarks Tuesday evening, said she thought the process for handling code of conduct complaints needed to be reviewed and revised to better enable all parties to resolve conflicts.
But she added: “It’s time for Harvard’s leaders to focus on working together, to be more interested in empowering others than being powerful, and to get to work on the real challenges facing Harvard.”
