In Plymouth, Attorney and Town Meeting member Rich Serkey requests a second opinion by the Attorney General on redaction, or blacking out of executive session minutes concerning the changes in former Town Manager Melissa Arrighi’s contract.
Bobbi Clark has more:
During a series of executive sessions last fall, the majority of the Select Board Board agreed to pay then Town Manager Melissa Arrighi two hundred seventy-seven thousand eighty-six dollars—an amount that includes severance pay. Town Meeting Member Rich Serkey says they also agreed…
“…that she would resign as Town Manager. They created a position called Special Assistant to the Town Manager and agreed she would be appointed as Special Assistant to the new Town Manager, and she would be paid the same amount of money that she would have been paid if she had served as Town Manager through the summer of 2022.”
What Serkey is concerned about is…
“…the fact that these decisions were very expensive from the point of view of the taxpayer and I wanted to know what discussions occurred in executive session that led to these decisions.”
So Serkey filed an open meeting law complaint…
“…with the Attorney General. As a result of that we received the minutes of the executive session minutes that I requested, but those minutes came with substantial portions redacted—blacked out. So, I have subsequently corresponded with the Attorney General asking for the Attorney General to hold a hearing on whether the information that was redacted ought to be disclosed. And the open meeting law provides that the Attorney General has that power to hold a hearing.”
