By Josh Davis, Associate Editor

(May 10, 2018) The Ocean Pines Association Board of Directors “is not following the requirements of the [Maryland] Homeowner’s Association Act regarding closed meetings,” according to bylaws and resolutions committee member and attorney Jim Trummel.

According to Committee Chairman Marty Clarke, a former director, the issue is not new.

“What the board is doing is simply reading the authority to go to a closed meeting, but that’s not all that’s required. What’s required is to state a purpose within that authority,” Trummel said during a committee meeting last Friday.

For example, Trummel said the February board-meeting minutes should have included documentation, including the authority, purpose and date, and who voted to close a meeting held in January.

“The point is, there are documentation requirements … that are not being followed,” Trummel said. “If the nature of the meeting is such that it’s difficult to state a purpose without jeopardizing the reason for the closed meeting, I can understand that.

“If you’re going to have a closed meeting … you need to be able to say something about the purpose and why is has to be a closed meeting,” Trummel added.

Committee member Jeff Knepper, also an attorney, said when he served on the board he created a template for closed meetings with a space for a statement of purpose.

“It’s real simple – whoever is going to be the person that’s going to make the motion to close gets a copy of one of those things. You fill it out … and then you read off the bloody form,” he said. “It’s a very simple fix.”

Resident Joe Reynolds said he’s often bothered by the frequent use of contract negotiations as a closed-meeting justification.

“I think, quite frankly, many times the board just likes to do these things in closed session because it’s out of the public eye,” he said.

For instance, Reynolds said, the board recently held two closed meetings to discuss buying or leasing software. He added, “A committee, on its own, got bids. Unprecedented as far as I know.”

“I think the association members should have had a right to know, at the very least, the amount of the bids and who is bidding,” he said. “This board seems to want to do everything in closed session and I don’t think it’s right.”

“In my experience, hardly ever would the name of the bidder and the dollar amount of the bid cause any harm for the association,” Knepper said. “Once you get beyond that and you get into discussion, now you can have harm – quite easily – because you could publish a negotiating position, or worse yet, you could publish a concern or a worry that the association was thinking about.”

Director Slobodan Trendic said the most recent closed meetings were held because, “apparently the association signed a mutual nondisclosure agreement with each firm.”

“We didn’t know what language was in that NDA and whether we are obliged by the NDA to certain nondisclosures,” he said.

When Reynolds asked, “who signed that on behalf of whom,” Trendic could not answer.

Clarke called both men out of order. Neither are committee members.

“I just want to add one comment, in my six years on the board I never attended a closed meeting that wasn’t illegal – not once – because they always say something about another topic,” Clarke said. “We are way out of control on closed meetings – way out of control.”