Now did the nine who attend constitute a quorum of any aldermanic subcommittee? If so, then the question becomes whether the conduct of the members extended beyond "on-site inspection." It would seem to me that if any discussion of a deliberative or evaluative nature is conducted during that tour means the participants lose the inspection exemption. The spirit of the law would seem to suggest that you can take a tour in private, but you'd better be very careful about what you talk about.

Our only difference is that, by posting the tour as a public meeting, the city ran the risk of violating the law if members of the public showed up and then were banned. The city probably could have gotten away with it, but only by banning everyone, not by picking and choosing.

I still maintain — and probably in disagreement with you — that, in the Newton North school tour case, the city officials had every right to choose who attended it. Here's why:

(1) The tour was not a meeting subject to the OML, since it falls under a site visit exclusion mentioned by the Attorney General's guide, hence it doesn't qualify as generally protected public access to interviewing officials, obtaining public documents, or otherwise gathering public information;

(2) While posting a notification of the meeting on the Public Notice Board might imply that the city intended to allow the public to attend, since the tour was not subject to the OML city officials had the right to change the meeting's ground rules at any time; and

(3) The TAB's story quotes the Mayor's spokesman as banning all media, not just some ("It doesn’t entitle the media to attend."), so Borreca v. Fasi does not apply because no particular journalists were singled out (and the story mentions no members of the public who were allowed in, either); Borreca further doesn't apply because Newton has no broad exclusion of contact with TAB reporters — they've just been kept out of this one event, as far as we know.

Like I said, I suspect that, in the end, we will disagree on this case, and I'm willing to drop it… after letting you get in one last word on it, of course!

P.S. If any one of the public (non-elected) officials on the tour took pictures, written notes, or a recording of the tour, however, the TAB should request those documents because they are public under the state Public Records Law, even if the meeting itself wasn't subject to the Open Meeting Law! This is the way for the TAB to get their pictures of the construction site…

Thirty years ago I would go to Winchester Town Hall every Monday morning, copy down all the public meetings, and put them in the Woburn Daily Times. Any member of the public would have had every right to show up at any of those events.

In the 1974 case of Borreca v. Fasi, the U.S. District Court in Hawaii found that government officials couldn't bar one reporter from news conferences that were open to everyone else. Although not officially precedent anywhere except in that district (it was not appealed), Borreca is generally invoked as the standard everywhere.

This 2005 article published by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press lays out the overall landscape.

The Baltimore case I was referring to — not the one you'll see in the RCFP article — was actually something different. It was about a reporter who demanded special privileges that some other reporters received, such as exclusive interviews and off-the-record briefings. She was shot down.

Dan, I am actually quite interested in hearing if there is a federal case where local officials were legally wrong to exclude some reporters and not others. I'm not a lawyer, or a professor of journalism, so I would like to be educated on this. I'm skeptical but open-minded…

As "Carl" said, only certain classes of people are protected legally under federal and state anti-discrimination laws. My non-lawyer understanding is that they could include or exclude anyone they wished at this event.

Regardless, please educate me on any relevant case law!

What do we have here, a trainee for State Representative/Speaker of the House running things here?

He's rating really high on the Bozometer.

Jeremy Solomon, the spokesman for Newton Mayor David Cohen told me this afternoon that someone neglected to state that the tour was by "invitation only" on the public posting. I reminded him that this was their problem, not ours. He did not share this view and defended the decision to lock us out.

And no, it doesn't matter whether that person is a reporter or not.