HADLEY — Email correspondence to all commissioners on the Hadley Housing Authority is prompting a board member to bring an Open Meeting Law complaint against her colleagues.

Risë Smythe-Freed on Tuesday filed the complaint against commissioners John Allen and Harry Chadwick, contending their communication earlier in December may have constituted deliberation outside a posted meeting.

“Allen and Chadwick have a pattern of sending emails to discuss agenda items and topics falling under Board of Commissioners responsibility to the entire Board of Commissioners since I became a commissioner the end of August 2022,” Smythe-Freed writes in the complaint she made with the town clerk’s office.

The emails referenced include one on Dec. 17 from Allen to the four members of the board, including Richard Witkos, its chairman, and Evelyn Musaya at the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, expressing his concern about whether there is a valid contract between the Amherst Housing Authority and Hadley Housing Authority.

The Hadley Housing Authority was expected to enter into a one-year management contract with the Amherst agency on Oct. 1, 2019. Since that time, the Hadley properties, Golden Court and Burke Way, have been under the auspices of the Amherst Housing Authority and Pamela Rogers, its executive director.

Allen’s emails mention getting the town’s attorney and the Hadley Select Board involved in discussions, and that he would not be at the scheduled Dec. 20 board meeting due to his concerns over the contract.

Then, according to Smythe-Freed’s complaint, Chadwick responded a day later calling the contents of Allen’s email as offering “disturbing information” that had raised other “serious issues” that would keep him, as well, from attending.

Though Witkos called the meeting, only two members were present and they could not deliberate on any item on the agenda, vote on or approve any legal or financial matters or address the subject of the contract.

To address the alleged violation, Smythe-Freed is asking that Allen and Chadwick retake the Open Meeting Law training offered by the attorney general’s office, stop sending emails and texts to the Board of Commissioners, and that should a scheduling conflict preclude them from attending meetings, or should they want to make suggestions for an agenda topic, to send emails or texts pnly to the board chairman.

Allen said he would defer comment until the board’s next meeting in January, when the alleged violation is expected to be discussed, while Chadwick didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

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