VIA EMAIL ONLY

October 2, 2026

Mr. Brian Kelly

Ms. Rebecca A. Whitfield

Attorney Gregory P. Piccirilli, Esq.

Legal Counsel, Glocester School Committee

Dear Mr. Kelly, Ms. Whitfield, and Attorney Piccirilli,

We have completed our investigation into the Open Meetings Act (“OMA”) Complaints filed by Mr. Brian Kelly (“Complainant 1”) and Ms. Rebecca A. Whitfield (“Complainant 2”) against the Glocester School Committee (“Committee”). We consolidate these Complaints and address them in a single finding, as both Complaints concern the same allegation stemming from the Committee’s same May 7, 2026 meeting. For the reasons set forth herein, we find that the Committee violated the OMA.

Complainant 1 alleges that the Committee convened on May 7, 2026 yet “failed to post timely minutes of this meeting [on the Secretary of State’s, hereinafter ‘SOS,’ website] in accordance with” the OMA. Complainant 1 adds that this Office “issued a finding of [a] violation to [the Committee] on June 15, 2026, for the same issue,”[1] and consequently requests that this Office find that the Committee “committed a willful or knowing violation” of the OMA given this prior violation.

Similarly, Complainant 2 submitted a Complaint to this Office alleging that the Committee “failed to timely file meeting minutes for its May 7, 2026 meeting.” Also like Complainant 1, Complainant 2 invoked the “prior Complaint [against the Committee] concerning repeated late filing of meeting minutes.”[2] Due to this past violation, Complainant 2 requests that this Office determine “whether this repeated conduct supports a finding that the violation was knowing and/or willful.” With her Complaint, Complainant 2 provided screenshots of the SOS website.

Legal Counsel to the Committee submitted a combined Response addressing both Complaints. The Committee concedes that the relevant meeting minutes were posted “on June 22, [2026,] 10 days late.” The Committee further notes that the subject minutes have since been posted to the SOS website.

Additionally, the Committee argues that its failure to timely post its May 7, 2026 meeting minutes did not amount to a willful or knowing OMA violation in part because the Committee had implemented a calendaring process in order to ensure that its meeting minutes were timely filed in accordance with the statute. In this specific instance, however, the calendar was “misread,” which caused the violation addressed herein.

We acknowledge the Complainants’ rebuttals.

While we are concerned that this is the Committee’s second OMA violation concerning a failure to timely post meeting minutes in relatively close succession, we decline to find a willful or knowing violation in this instance as the facts and circumstances underlying each violation are distinguishable. In OM 26-17, the violation found therein stemmed from a flawed yet “good faith belief that meeting minutes had to be approved before they could be posted on the [SOS] website.”[3]

The instant violation came about not through a misinterpretation of the law but by unintentional human error. The Committee submits that it had implemented a calendaring system to ensure that meeting minutes were timely filed but that as to the May 7, 2026 meeting minutes, the calendar was simply “misread.” This was due in part to the responsible employee concurrently tracking meetings of both the Glocester School Committee and the Foster Glocester Regional School Committee, and meeting postponements and a disruption to the usual schedule seemingly caused some confusion. In any case, this underlying clerical error distinguishes this violation from the prior one, which was attributable to a lack of knowledge of the statute. See Davis v. Town of Exeter, OM 25-25 (“[t]his Office routinely declines to find willful or knowing violations of the OMA where the behavior at issue is attributable to inadvertent human error”); see also Solas v. South Kingstown School Committee, OM 23-03 (“Although we are concerned by this history of similar violations, we also note that the circumstances related to the violations have been different.”).

Further militating against a finding of a willful or knowing violation in this instance is the fact that its inadvertency finds support in a sworn affidavit. The Committee’s employee responsible for fulfilling the posting requirement attests to the fact that her “failure to post the minutes in a timely manner was purely due to inadvertence. At no time would I purposefully refuse to file minutes, particularly knowing the amount of public scrutiny I have received on social media.”[4] In a remarkably similar situation, this Office declined to find a willful or knowing violation. See Touchette v. Johnston Town Council, OM 22-57 (declining to find a willful or knowing violation where the public body identified “that it ha[d] a process in place to track timely filing of official and/or approved minutes and the fact that only draft minutes of the four (4) untimely posted meetings were publicly filed was ‘inadvertent.’”).

This finding nevertheless serves as notice that the actions discussed herein violate the OMA and may serve as evidence of a willful or knowing violation in any similar, future situation. We note our concern that, based on the record, it seems that a lone employee was vested with ensuring OMA compliance such that she had to cut short a vacation to rectify the minutes issue. We recommend that the Committee implement redundancy measures so as to avoid a future situation where a single point of failure could result in OMA non-compliance. See Langseth v. Warwick City Council, OM 22-27 (“We are … concerned that staffing changes and numerous duties foisted upon a single employee have caused the Council to delay its compliance with the law.”).

Additionally, we strongly urge Committee staffers who are responsible for OMA compliance to pursue additional training, including reviewing the OMA’s provisions and watching the OMA portion of this Office’s Annual Open Government Summit that is available on this Office’s website. 

Although the Attorney General will not file suit in this matter, nothing in the OMA precludes an individual from pursuing a complaint in the Superior Court as specified in the OMA. The Complainants may pursue an OMA complaint within “ninety (90) days of the attorney general’s closing of the complaint or within one hundred eighty (180) days of the alleged violation, whichever occurs later.” R.I. Gen. Laws § 42-46-8.

We thank you for your interest in keeping government open and accountable to the public.

Sincerely,

PETER F. NERONHA

ATTORNEY GENERAL

By: /s/ Adam D. Roach

Adam D. Roach

Special Assistant Attorney General