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Supervisors agree to confirm consent before reading emailed comments into public record
Summary
After public comment and discussion under old business, the board agreed as a practice to obtain consent before reading a resident's emailed comment into the meeting record and to read such comments either during public comment or the related agenda item; the solicitor said the board has no obligation to read emails but recommended the consent step as a courtesy.
Montgomery Township supervisors on March 23 discussed how the board should handle emailed letters or excerpts that supervisors or staff read aloud during meetings and reached a board-level practice: when written communications are to be read into the public record staff or a supervisor will first seek consent from the author and, if read aloud, do so during the public comment period or the relevant agenda item.
The issue surfaced after several meetings in which excerpts of emails were read without identifying the sender, which some attendees said created confusion about whether authors were township residents or business owners. Michael Washington raised that concern during public comment, asking whether the board should adopt rules to ensure people whose emails are read are identified.
Township solicitor Sean Coenny advised that the board is not obligated to read emails into the public record and that regulating supervisors’ comments would be a separate procedural exercise under Robert’s Rules. He recommended as a practical approach that staff ask consent and, when appropriate, read the name and status (resident or business owner) and handle the reading as public comment or during the agenda item to which it pertains.
The board agreed by consensus to adopt that approach as an operational practice, instructing staff to seek consent before reading authored communications and to restrict such readings to public comment or the agenda item in question.
Next steps: staff will adopt the agreed practice and the solicitor will provide guidance if the supervisors want a formal policy change for future meetings.
