To the editor:

The Portsmouth government has not been honest with its citizens. On Jan. 19 the Town of Portsmouth received a letter from the Rhode Island attorney general informing the council that it has been found in violation of the Open Meetings Act. The Portsmouth Concerned Citizens submitted this complaint on July 27 of last year. 

The attorney general sent his ruling via e-mail, but the town’s administration has kept it secret from the people and at least some members of the council, as it did with the original complaint.

The attorney general concluded that the council had both conducted discussions of and voted to make changes to the town’s pension plan in executive session in violation of the law.

This approach is the very opposite of transparency. The town routinely trumpets its achievements in the press, but it is clearly burying the bad news.

Extending the secrecy, there has also been a failure to place the attorney general’s ruling in the correspondence section of the council’s agenda and possibly into the town’s official records, as should be required by any reasonable administrative controls.

Also suppressed was the warning in the attorney general’s ruling to the council about any further violations of the rules regarding executive session, citing a similar case Vitkevich v. Portsmouth Town Council (2014).

By meeting without publicly stating that pensions would be discussed, the council hid the knowledge that they were meeting in secret to discuss pension matters, which are a very serious financial aspect of town business. Pensions are not one of the legally authorized topics for executive session for very good reasons.

Suppressing the existence of the complaint, and subsequent ruling, does not change the facts. It does however, suggest that there is something very wrong in the administration of the pension plan, and that there is unlikely to be any public discussion of serious problems.

Larry Fitzmorris

President, Portsmouth Concerned Citizens

50 Kristen Court

Portsmouth