General Assembly's Compliance with Open Meetings Law Improves

General Assembly's Compliance with Open Meetings Law Improves

The General Assembly complied with Rhode Island's Open Meetings law 92 percent of the time last year, according to a report released today by Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis.

The Open Meetings law requires most government bodies to inform the public about upcoming meetings 48 hours in advance. Though the General Assembly is exempt from this law, according to "Access 2010" -- a performance review of every House and Senate committee during last year's legislative session -- House compliance went from 93 percent in 2009 to 94 percent in 2010, and Senate compliance held steady at 90 percent.

"Accountability is crucial in measuring government’s willingness to keeping the public informed about its work,” said Mollis, who compiles the statistics as part of his commitment to open government.

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According to the review, both the House and Senate had nearly perfect compliance records for the first six months of 2010 but stumbled in the days before recessing on June 10th. 28 of 31 total Open Meetings violations occurred in their final six days of work. 

"The General Assembly's ability to provide adequate notice drops in response to the volume of legislation and the compressed timeframe for debate in the closing days of the session," Mollis said. "I am ready to work with the legislature and other stakeholders to craft a solution to the log jam that makes it so difficult to maintain their commitment to openness in the final days."

When Mollis took office in 2007, House compliance was at 57 percent -- 37 percentage points lower than it is now -- and Senate compliance was 67 percent -- 23 points below the 2010 statistic. Mollis posts the legislative meeting notices and agendas on his website [http://sos.ri.gov/] along with a searchable database of notices for most other state and municipal agencies. A full copy of his "Access 2010" report can be found here: http://sos.ri.gov/publicinfo/opengovernment/accessreports/.