Uprise RI today sent an email to the Rhode Island Attorney General‘s office alleging that the Providence City Council Finance Committee routinely violates the spirit of the Open Meetings Act by scheduling meetings with inadequate descriptions of what the meetings entail.

For instance, this meeting link has all the information one could ask for about the meeting, but is is presented in a way that is unhelpful. In the Public Portion of the notice, there are two links, items 3a and 4a, that give you a list of tax rebates and credits approved by the City Assessor. [See:  Certificates (61F and 61G) and Certificates (62H and 62I)]

On these two lists are hundred of properties that have ben granted tax rebates totaling over $2.5 million, but the list of properties is presented as a static PDF, a bunch of photos of a database that is neither searchable or sortable. If one is interested in searching for a specific property that has been granted some sort of tax relief, one has to go through the PDFs line by line, an onerous and unnecessary process given that the City Council could easily release a searchable file instead of, or in addition to, a PDF.

Under Rhode Island law, all public meetings notices must include “a statement specifying the nature of the business to be discussed.” Uprise RI believes it is important that such a notice be easily understandable and useful to the public.

Here’s what the information in the PDF looks like when you download and open it. Note that each PDF contains around six pages of information presented in this way:

This may seem a minor point, but Uprise RI believes in the promise of an open and responsive government. In addition to requesting that the information be presented in a more easily digestible form from the City Council, we are asking the Attorney General to issue a ruling that ensures that all levels of government do a better job of informing the public about the nature of their proceedings.

Update: Shortly after sending our complaint to the Attorney General’s office, the Providence City Council cancelled the Finance Committee hearing: