Northfield's Grand Juror, Chris Bradley reads his prepared statement to the Selectboard at Monday Night's meeting after being invited to the meeting by the chairman of the Selectboard. Photo by Bill Croney, The Northfield News The Attorney General’s office has ruled that the executive session held by the Northfield Selectboard on December 3, 2009 was “not inconsistent with the open meeting” law.

The Selectboard called an open meeting on December 3, 2009 to discuss the 2010-2011 budget for the town.

During that meeting, the Selectboard went into an executive session by a vote of 3 in favor and two members opposed, to discuss personnel matters.

The Attorney General found that what occurred during the executive session was a discussion of the budget which is not a proper purpose for going into executive session. During the executive session, the Attorney General found that the members asked the town manager to prepare an alternate budget which included the elimination of the position of superintendent of public works, the job currently held by Bill Lyon.

The Attorney General stated in a letter dated May 6, 2010 that budget questions are not a proper purpose for an executive session. However, because “it is reasonable to assume that the executive session involved some discussion of elimination of” Bill Lyon’s position, that purpose is “a close question.”

The letter goes on to state that there was no discussion of any personnel issue but was rather solely a budgetary problem, to wit, the elimination of the position of a public employee. Yet, the letter concluded that the Selectboard did not overstep its bounds.

Chris Bradley, Northfield’s Grand Juror, read a statement at the Selectboard meeting last week in which he stated that though the Attorney General had decided the issue of whether the opening meeting law was violated and found that it was not, there are still two issues which the Attorney General has not addressed.

The chairman of the Selectboard, Greg Sanders, asked Mr. Bradley to be present at Monday’s meeting.

Mr. Bradley sent a presentment to the Attorney General earlier this year following the vote in January to reinstate Mr. Lyon’s position in the 2010- 2011 budget complaining that the attempt to eliminate his positions from the budget had not been properly handled and were contrary to state law.

The other two aspects of the presentment beyond the question of the open meeting law had to do with whether the Selectboard’s action on December 3 by calling an executive session during a budget meeting was legal at all and finally, the question of “legality, transparency and openness of the Select Board, the [Village] Trustees and the Town Manager to keep secret what was being considered – when this was a budget decision.”

Mr. Bradley went on to state that though the first question has been answered by the Attorney General’s office as to the violation of the open meeting law, the other two questions remain open.

He stated that he expected to follow up on those allegations.

He asked if the Selectboard members had any questions for him after he made his statement. They did not.