Friday, July 10, 2009

Asbury Park Promises Better Compliance with Sunshine Law

In a July 10, 2009 letter, Asbury Park City Attorney Frederick C. Raffetto, writing on behalf of the Mayor and City Council, agreed to modify the Council's executive session procedure to better comply with the Sen. Byron M. Baer Open Public Meetings Act.

Raffetto's letter was in response to a July 3, 2009 letter from the New Jersey Libertarian Party's Open Government Advocacy Project (NJLP) that expressed three concerns regarding the City's closed meeting procedure. Specifically, the NJLP expressed concern that a) minutes of executive sessions were not being promptly disclosed to the the public, b) the Council discussed an issue in executive session that ought to have been discussed in public, and c) the Council would privately discuss issues other than those listed on the executive session's agenda.

The referred to above are on-line at http://ogtf.lpcnj.org/2009190oH//APOPMA.pdf

John Paff, Somerset, New Jersey

2 comments:

Chris Adams said...

New Jersey residents are lucky to have John Paff. He is an activist who has stopped so many towns from abusive practices that try to exclude voters and taxpayers from participating in democracy. It's too bad Asbury had to receive one of his letters - lets hope the try to run an open government.

Dapawprint said...

We can, and will hope. There is always room for improvement and being upfront and open would be a great start.