Right to Know Advisory Committee

In this episode, Rebecca Lambert and Amanda Campbell explore the work of the 18-member Right to Know Advisory Committee, which oversees and supports the Maine Freedom of Access Act.  They discuss who serves on the committee, what the committee does, why the work maters, and how it impacts municipalities across the state.  For those looking for a clear and concise overview of the committee’s role and responsibilities, this episode is worth a listen.  

Transcript

Welcome everyone to Potholes & Politics, Local Maine Issues From A to Z. I'm your co-host Rebecca Lambert, and with me as always is my amazing colleague, Amanda Campbell. 

Good morning, Rebecca. Thanks everybody for listening. 

Yes, thanks for listening. 

Our last episode was a jam packed one full of great housing information delivered by our newest member of our team, Tanya Emery, who is the lead on all housing related matters. When you go back to listen to that episode, please consider liking and subscribing to our podcast, so you never miss one of these episodes.

So, this week we are your special guests for this episode, and we're planning to discuss the Right to Know Advisory Committee. We'll have a conversation about who they are, why they're important, and what the committee and its related subcommittees are up to this time of year. So, Rebecca, the Right to Know Law falls under the jurisdiction of the State and Local Government committee, which is in your wheelhouse for the advocacy team. Who are they?

Well, the Right to Know Advisory Committee in Maine is a body that was created by statute in 2005, and they support and monitor the implementation of the state's open government laws under the Maine Freedom of Access Act, which you'll hear me call FOAA from now on. Membership includes one senator and one representative, and 16 other members that represent a variety of interests such as the attorney general's office, press interests, municipalities, the judicial branch, state and county agencies, law enforcement among others. It's worth mentioning though, that the seat representing municipal interests is vacant at the moment, but that seat which is appointed by the governor is just awaiting for action.

So, in other words, the nomination’s been made to sit on the advisory committee and we're just waiting to hear who she appoints. Oftentimes when a legislative study group requires municipal participation, MMA is asked for suggestions on who that person could be, and usually we recruit through self-nomination meaning. members let us know that they're interested and we forward their credentials to the appointing official who in this case is the governor.

Okay. So, then Rebecca, what exactly is the purpose of the Right to Know Committee?

 Well, as a whole, the Right to Know Advisory Committee serves as a resource and a coordinator for public access to records and proceedings, helping to ensure compliance with FOAA’s purposes and principles. It also provides guidance and develops best practices for governmental entities at all levels, state, local, and judicial, and handling public records and public proceedings and supports training and educational efforts about open government laws.

Finally, the committee reviews statutory exemptions, which are records that may lawfully be withheld, makes recommendations for legislative changes to improve transparency and issues annual reports to the governor, the legislature, and the chief justice. 

All right, so this committee sounds like it's beneficial for ensuring access to public records, which is great, but why does this matter to our members?

Good question. It matters because by providing this oversight, guidance, and review of FOAA and its related provisions, the committee helps maintain accountability and transparency of public entities in Maine. It’s work touches on when citizens can access government meetings and records and under what circumstances access can be restricted. 

So, the first full Right to Know Advisory Committee meeting of the year was held on September 26th and covered a lot of material, including the election of a new chair, a review of the scope and duties of the committee, and an update on previous work. That first meeting of the year generally focuses heavily on reviewing previous recommendations and the status of actions related to those recommendations. The September meeting also reviewed responses to letters and questionnaires that were sent out in the spring and any exceptions that were enacted or amended. This meeting is also when the committee discusses its focus for the interim, which is right now, and creates any additional subcommittees to help accomplish their work.

Current subcommittees for 2025 include exceptions, burdensome FOAA requests, public employee records, and a newly created subcommittee, covering technology use for FOAA.

That's right. As I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, public records exceptions are something that the committee actively reviews as part of their work.

As you can imagine, the task of reviewing all the exceptions is a lofty one. So, to accomplish this, they have this standing public records exception subcommittee that actively reviews the statutory exemptions in Maine law. They started their work for 2025, holding their first meeting on Wednesday, October 15.

At that meeting, they reviewed the exceptions considered in 2024 and shared that there were 37 exceptions that were slated for review this year. Their last meeting was held on November 5th, at which they invited MMA or a representative to come speak about an exception relating to ambulance reports and medical records held by municipal ambulance services.

Scott Susi from the City of Sanford agreed to present and he did a great job explaining what information can be released through FOAA as it pertains to medical records and their call logs. So, thanks to Scott and to all our members actually who step up when we ask them to help us advocate on important municipal issues. It's really beneficial and your voice goes a long way. 

We're really lucky to have great, members everywhere, but specifically on our LPC, and Scott is a member of the LPC, so thanks to all of our members and especially him for his contribution in this particular area. 

Another key issue that the Right to Know Advisory Committee has been expanding is how to address “unduly burdensome or oppressive”, quote unquote, public record requests by creating a subcommittee to tackle this topic and a couple surveys were sent out to municipalities in 2024 requesting information. It's clear to the subcommittee that there are instances of burdensome requests across the state, but that fulfilling complicated requests looks quite different in different areas, which I'm sure is shocking to all of our listeners. Striking a balance between transparency and operational capacity of public entities is crucial to respond to requests effectively and efficiently. 

And so, the Burdensome Request Committee has met three times so far in 2025 and recognize that the questions they were asking, as it relates to a municipality's use of technology when responding to FOAA requests, overlapped some with the next subcommittee we'll discuss. And the burdensome request meeting, next one, will be held on November 19th, which is a Wednesday, at, 10:00 AM. 

So. the technology subcommittee was formed from that first full meeting of the Right to Know Advisory Committee held on September 26th. And at this meeting there was a discussion of how technology is used when responding to FOAA requests. It was determined that state agencies are kind of largely uniform with respect to their technology processes 'cause they all fall under that state umbrella.  But there was an unknown about how schools or municipalities utilize technology when it comes to processing FOAA requests.

Because of that, the Office of Policy and Legal Analysis reached out to MMA to see if there was someone who could present to the subcommittee about how municipalities use technology in this manner. Without a lot of time to gather answers, our team did our best to reach out to some of the larger municipalities to get a sense of what they used for technology and submitted a memo to the subcommittee for their October 27th meeting.

And due to the topic overlap between the technology and the Burdensome Requests subcommittee that we talked about, a few members from the burdensome request subcommittee decided that they would join this conversation at that October 27th meeting, to hear firsthand how the technology is used in municipalities. Turned out to be a great discussion on how FOAA responses look different across the state and members of the subcommittees were appreciative of the information that we were able to gather on such short notice.  Both subcommittees are recommending an in-depth survey of our members regarding access to technology, and they brought that to the full committee at their October 29th meeting. So be on the lookout for a survey about this topic in the coming months. The next meeting of the technology subcommittee, we'll be held, today actually at noontime. 

So, I listened in to that technology meeting and your presentation and you provided them with a lot of really good information, especially under the time constraints you had. So, it'll be interesting to see how they use that info in any decision making.

I can say as a former town administrator, the burden that some even very small requests can have on a small office can be huge. We had a very small staff. And generally speaking, we received very few FOAA requests. However, typically during election season, we would regularly receive a request for tax information specific to a former congressman, who shall rename nameless, who had property enrolled in tree growth.

And the request usually resulted in hours of research and hundreds of pages of tax documents, memos, correspondence, emails, and finally we got smart and made two packets when we got a request so we could provide one to the requestor and then keep one on hand. So, the next time we got a request, all we had to do was photocopy what we already had and add anything that was new.

I was reminded of this process when you talked about municipalities posting their FOAA requests results online, and it seems like a brilliant solution for small communities who may get tasked with the same request over and over and over. 

It really is a great solution, and it seems to be catching on across the state, not just in small municipalities, but larger ones as well.

As a side note, all of these meetings can be streamed online. We'll drop a link in the transcript to the Right to Know Advisory Committee website, and on that website it lists all the meeting information. By clicking on the hyperlink of that meeting date, you'll have access to all the materials for that specific meeting.

Moving on to the final subcommittee of the Right to Know Advisory Committee. It is the Public Employee Discipline Records subcommittee, which was formed to examine issues related to public employee disciplinary records. Their first meeting was held on October 22nd and was mainly housekeeping. They discussed the upcoming work on their schedule, reviewed previous work accomplished, and set future meeting dates.

What I did hear at this meeting was, there was discussion of a potential gray area in the law. Typically, the final written decision is public. But when a public employee is subject to an investigation, but before the investigation is complete, that employee leaves the organization, should that record be public? That's the question. It highlighted the issue that although the investigation may not lead to discipline, since the employee doesn't work for the organization anymore, the question remains whether that conduct should be public. Schools were kind of used as an example. Would another school district benefit from the information of the investigation?

So it'll be interesting to see where they land on this issue because like housing issues, these issues are layered and very complex. Their last meeting was held on November 6th, and I need to go back and listen to that today. 

It sounds like the Right to Know Advisory Committee is certainly essential to making sure that the FOAA laws are implemented appropriately across all sorts of government agencies. But wow, this is a lot to keep in your brain.  I applaud you taking on all of these pieces of the right to know law and keeping tracks of, on all of that for our team because it certainly is important for us and important for our members. 

And with all of that, that wraps up our Right to Know episode. We hope you enjoyed this in-depth discussion on this incredible amount of work that the Right to Know Committee does and their subcommittees and why all of these are important to our members and to the public, for access to those public records and those proceedings.

Yes. Thanks everyone for listening. As a reminder, there'll be a link to the Right to Know Advisory Committee website in the transcript, where you can find meeting materials for the full committee and any of the subcommittees. We hope that you have a great day.

Thanks for listening. 

Thanks for listening, everybody. Have a good one.

RTKAC website: https://legislature.maine.gov/right-to-know-advisory-committee