Secret Since 2017: The Council Just Reviewed a Stack of Old Closed Door Minutes.
Here Is What That Means, and What to Ask.
Written by: Dan Shibilia
At the end of its July 6 meeting, the Methuen City Council excused those of us in the Media Center for the meeting and slipped into executive session for one specific job: to go back through a pile of its own old sealed minutes and vote on whether any of them can finally be made public. The dates on the list are not from this year. They run from February 2017 through September 2019. Some of these records have been locked away for the better part of a decade.
That raises a simple question worth asking out loud. Why?
To get there, it helps to understand how this actually works.
The basics: open is the rule
Massachusetts runs on a law called the Open Meeting Law, G.L. c. 30A, Sections 18 through 25. The idea baked into it is that the public gets to watch its government make decisions. The state’s highest court said as much a long time ago, explaining that the law was written to strip away the secrecy around the decisions that shape public policy. That fun little idea was brought to us be the case of Ghiglione v. School Committee of Southbridge, 376 Mass. 70 (1978). The exception to the rule or the closed door meetings, called executive sessions, are the narrow exception, and courts read those exceptions strictly. McCrea v. Flaherty, 71 Mass. App. Ct. 637 (2008).
A council can only go into executive session for one of ten specific reasons spelled out in the law. These are the ten purposes in Massachusetts law (G.L. c. 30A, § 21(a)) that let a public body meet in executive session. A body has to pick one of these every time and state it out loud before closing the doors.
To discuss the reputation, character, health, or discipline, dismissal, or complaints against a specific person (a named officer, employee, or individual). That person has the right to be notified and to ask that the discussion happen in open session instead.
To conduct strategy sessions or contract talks with nonunion personnel.
To discuss strategy for collective bargaining or litigation, but only if the chair declares that talking about it in public would hurt the body’s bargaining or legal position.
To discuss the deployment of security personnel or devices, or strategy around them.
To investigate charges of criminal misconduct or to consider filing criminal complaints.
To discuss buying, selling, leasing, or valuing real estate, but only if the chair declares that an open discussion would weaken the body’s negotiating position.
To comply with, or act under the authority of, another general or special law or a federal grant requirement. (This is the one the Methuen council used on July 6 to review its old minutes, since the Open Meeting Law itself requires that review.)
To interview applicants for a job or appointment through a preliminary screening committee, if the chair declares that meeting in the open would make it harder to attract qualified candidates.
To meet with a mediator about litigation or a decision involving another party.
To discuss trade secrets or confidential, competitively sensitive proprietary information tied to a body operating as a municipal utility or energy supplier.
On July 6 the council cited Purpose 7, which covers acting under the authority of another law. Here, that other law is the Open Meeting Law itself, which requires the council to review its old executive session minutes. So this part was routine. The council was doing a thing the law tells it to do.
The part people miss: secret does not mean forever
Here is the piece that matters for this story. When a public body meets behind closed doors, it still has to keep minutes. Those minutes can be withheld from the public, but only, in the words of the statute, “as long as publication may defeat the lawful purposes of the executive session.” G.L. c. 30A, Section 22(f). The very next words in the law are “but no longer.”
Read that again… out loud for those sitting near you to hear too.
The secrecy is supposed to have a shelf life. Once the reason for keeping something quiet is gone, the minutes are supposed to become public. If a 2018 session was about, say, a lawsuit or a land deal, those minutes stay sealed until the lawsuit or the deal is finished, and then they are supposed to open up.
To make sure that actually happens, the law hands the council a chore. It has to go back and review its sealed minutes “at reasonable intervals” to check whether the reason for secrecy still holds. Whatever it decides then has to be announced at its next meeting and written into the minutes. G.L. c. 30A, Section 22(g). In plain terms, the public is entitled to learn what the council did with those records.
FYI: We went back and checked to see what the last time these meetings were reviewed. We were unable to find anything on the matter.
So here is the accountability question
The minutes the council took up on July 6 are from 2017, 2018, and 2019. The law asks for review “at reasonable intervals.” Six to nine years is a long interval by any plain reading of those words.
That opens up a handful of fair questions for the chair, the mayor, and the city solicitor, and Inside Methuen intends to ask them.
Were these minutes reviewed at any point before July 6, or had they simply been sitting sealed since the day they were written?
If they were held this long, what was the justification, and does that reason still exist in 2026?
And most concretely: on July 6, what justification is the council using to keep the items secret, and why?
That last one is not optional information. Under the law, the council’s decision on these minutes has to be announced at its next public meeting and recorded in the minutes. So a straight answer should be available to anyone who asks.
And what if a councilor just tells us what happened?
Here is a question that comes up any time a body meets in private. What actually stops a councilor from walking out and telling a reporter, or a neighbor, exactly what was said and how everyone voted? The answer is not what most people expect.
The Open Meeting Law itself does almost nothing to a member who talks. That law was built to pry government open, not to punish people for revealing what happened inside. Its penalties are pointed at a body that wrongly shuts the public out, not at an official who lets the public in. So a leak, oddly enough, falls outside the law entirely, and the state office that enforces the Open Meeting Law has no authority over it.
So, why even do it if the body won’t respect its own rules?
The real exposure, if there is any, comes from a separate law, the state conflict of interest law, G.L. c. 268A. It bars a public official from improperly disclosing confidential material picked up through the job. An elected councilor counts, and sealed executive session material can fall under that umbrella, so a leak could draw a complaint to the State Ethics Commission. Two things soften it, though… the penalty is a civil fine, not jail, and the disclosure has to be “improper,” which the Commission weighs case by case rather than treating every slip as a violation.
In the real world, the consequences are almost always political rather than legal. Unfortunately, Methuen politics is about popularity and nothing else so this is not a deterent here. A council can censure one of its own, pull their committee assignments, and quietly stop trusting them with anything sensitive. What it cannot do is throw an elected colleague out of office over a leak. That call belongs to the voters.
What you can do
If you want to follow this yourself, a few doors are open…
Start with the council’s next set of minutes. Whatever it decided about those old sessions on July 6 has to be announced at the next public meeting and written into the record, so that is the first place a straight answer should surface.
You can also go to the source.
Anyone can file a public records request with the city clerk, asking for the executive session minutes the council voted to release along with the record of the July 6 decision. The city generally has ten business days to respond, and it cannot bill you just for the time it spends reviewing those minutes.
If the city stalls, or keeps records sealed without pointing to a clear legal reason, you can file an Open Meeting Law complaint.
It goes first to the council itself, then, after a 30 day window, to the Attorney General’s Division of Open Government. The form is free and lives on the state website at mass.gov. Three or more registered voters can also take the matter straight to Superior Court.
None of this means anyone did anything wrong. Reviewing old minutes is exactly what the council is supposed to do, and better late than never. But records that sat untouched since 2017 are worth a few questions, and the people of Methuen are entitled to the answers. We will be asking, and we will let you know what we hear.
Hopefully we see the School Committee do the same soon with the stockpile of old executive session minutes.
Sources:
Massachusetts Open Meeting Law, G.L. c. 30A, Sections 18 through 25, with the minutes review requirements at Section 22(f) and (g);
Office of the Attorney General, Division of Open Government, guidance on reviewing executive session minutes under Purpose 7, G.L. c. 30A, Section 21(a)(7);
Ghiglione v. School Committee of Southbridge, 376 Mass. 70 (1978);
McCrea v. Flaherty, 71 Mass. App. Ct. 637 (2008); Methuen City Council agenda, July 6, 2026.