Berlin resident Jason Walter filed a complaint with the Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board claiming the Berlin City Council violated open meeting provisions of state law when it went into closed session to discuss a contract between Berlin and the Berlin Fire Company. The Compliance Board sided with Walter.

This issue of closed meetings may be of interest in OPA, where the Board of Directors frequently meets in closed sessions under sometimes questionable circumstances.

Municipalities are governed by a different set of rules than private entity HOAs. However, given the nature of the Compliance Board's response to Waters' Berlin complaint, there may be some applicability to consider.

For example, the Maryland HOA Act governing closed board meetings allows specific issues to be discussed in closed sessions. For example, two frequently used by the OPA Board of Directors are:

• Consultation with legal counsel on legal matters;
• Consideration of the terms or conditions of a business transaction in the negotiation stage if the disclosure could adversely affect the economic interests of the homeowners association;

The issue, of course, is how such language is interpreted. In the Berlin case, the Compliance Board said Berlin's use of the municipality legal advice exception covers only the interchange between the lawyer and the public body. Once the advice is given, the body must return to an open session.

Regarding business transactions or contracts, the Compliance Board said going into a closed session was only appropriate to discuss competitive bids, not non-competitive contracts. Past OPA boards, as one example, have met in closed sessions to discuss non-competitive parking contracts with Seacrets.

We do not know how the Consumer Protection Division of the Maryland Attorney General's office, the entity handling HOA complaints, would decide on a complaint from an association member making charges similar to those made by Walter.

It should be noted that any decisions of the Consumer Protection Division or the Maryland Open Meeting Compliance Board are only advisory opinions. Anyone seeking a binding legal decision on some issue must seek redress in Court, and those advisory opinions may not even be used in a court case.

Fighting "City Hall" is no romp in the park.