The Rutland Herald has reported that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission scheduled a closed-door meeting in New Hampshire next month in part to avoid the Vermont Right-to-Know Law. Today, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz blasted the NRC’s decision.
The meeting is to discuss the tritium leak at Vermont Yankee. Town officials from Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire are invited to the April 14 meeting.
As Secretary of State, Markowitz advises local elected officials on how to comply with the Right-to-Know Law. She told me this afternoon that the NRC has misunderstood Vermont law.
“I find it shocking and somewhat offensive that a federal official has said that he is purposely holding a meeting out of state to try to avoid an open government law. As a practical matter, though, you can’t. The way Vermont’s laws work, is that if a quorum of, a majority of the board come to talk about the business of the board or to make decisions, you have to do it in a publicly noticed meeting, where the public has the right to attend and the right to comment. Even if they decided to hold the meeting in New Hampshire, if there was a quorum of a local board present, it would need to be publicly noticed.”
The NRC has announced a meeting open to the public two days before, on April 12, in Brattleboro’s Ramada Inn. As New England Coalition’s Ray Shadis put it in an email, “NRC to meet with rabble on April 12.”
