Trustees failed to declare state-approved reasons for holding closed-door meetings.
Steven E. Como, chairman of the Holyoke Soldiers' Home board of trustees.HOLYOKE – The board of trustees of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home will learn rules such as the importance of citing a state-approved reason before closing the door on the public at a meeting.
Trustees will be among those attending a seminar that the office of Attorney General Martha M. Coakley will give about the Open Meeting Law May 25. The seminar will be 6 to 8:30 p.m. at Northampton High School on Elm Street, officials said.
Trustees requested the training after The Republican in February raised questions after reviewing 56 pages of minutes and notices of trustees’ meetings going back to July 1. The meetings were to discuss candidates for Home superintendent.
Board chairman Steven E. Como, of Pittsfield, said Thursday the Open Meeting Law training would be on May 25 in Northampton, but referred questions to Coakley’s office.
Harry Pierre, a spokesman for Coakley, said Friday the training is open to the public.
“A lot of municipal officials have signed up because they want to know (the law), so they don’t commit an Open Meeting Law violation,” Pierre said.
The Republican reported in March that trustees in the fall and winter failed to cite in open session reasons why they were going into executive session several times. The Open Meeting Law requires such a reason be cited before a governmental body can close the door on the public.
Examples of reasons the law allows for closed-door sessions are collective bargaining and litigation.
Trustees acknowledged to the Patrick administration that they didn’t cite a reason in open session for going into executive sessions, Jennifer Kritz, spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, told The Republican last moth.
Trustees also interviewed five candidates for superintendent in closed-door session instead of in open session, she wrote.
The Republican review came after the Patrick administration refused to reveal the identity of the finalist for the $106,000-a-yearjob of superintendent despite the board of trustees having referred its recommended candidate to state officials in early November.
The state acknowledged Feb. 23, after The Republican posted a story earlier that day on MassLive.com, that Paul Barabani, 60, of Chicopee, was the new superintendent.
At a ceremony for Barabani held outside on the Soldiers’ Home grounds Thursday, Como joked about the Open Meeting Law problems: “The five legal counsels that I have tell me that I must say that this is an open meeting.”
The seven-member board is a volunteer panel appointed by the governor to oversee the Home and represent the four Western Massachusetts counties.
Besides Como, the board consists of Margaret E. Oglesby, of Springfield, James J. Tierney, of Holyoke, Walter J. Zarichak, of Westfield, John J. Fitzgerald, of Longmeadow, all in Hampden County, and Cynthia R. Watson, of Granby, in Hampshire County, and Bernard L. Jones, of Colrain, in Franklin County.
The Soldiers’ Home, on Cherry Street, opened in 1952. It provides residential beds and outpatient clinic services including optometry, ear, nose and throat and social services.
The clinic treats 2,200 veterans a year, officials said.
The Home has 356 employees and a yearly budget of $19.4 million.