Published Minutes

[Guest Bill1201]

Our Homeowners Association BOD holds periodic meetings to manage the affairs of the Association which are not open to the Membership. The minutes of these meetings are approved by the BOD and then posted on the Association website for members to read.

My question is: Does posting these minutes to the website constitute Publishing the minutes?

[Richard Brown]

I'm afraid that is a question which your organization must answer for itself.  Reading and approval of the minutes is covered in RONR on pages 473-476.  RONR makes reference to publishing a "record of the proceedings", but not to publishing the minutes.  The reference in RONR on pages 475-476 to publication of the proceedings is NOT referring to publishing the minutes.  RONR makes no reference whatsoever to publishing the minutes.  It does, however, make reference to distributing the draft minutes prior to approval.   What your organization does with the minutes once they are approved is up to the organization (other than the requirement that the secretary make them available to the members).

Here is the language on pages 475-476 regarding publication of the "proceedings":  "PUBLICATION OF AN ASSEMBLY'S PROCEEDINGS. Sometimes a society wishes to have a full record of its proceedings made available to the public, and when such a record of the proceedings is to be published (in which case it is often called "proceedings," "transactions," or the like), it frequently contains, in addition to the information described above for inclusion in the minutes, a list of the speakers on each side of every question, with an abstract or the text of each address. In such cases the secretary should have an assistant. When it is desired, as in some conventions, [page 476] to publish the proceedings in full, the secretary's assistant should be a stenographic reporter or recording technician. The presiding officer should then take particular care that everyone to whom he assigns the floor is fully identified. Under these conditions it is usually necessary to require members to use a public address system. Reports of committees should be printed exactly as submitted, the record showing what action was taken by the assembly in regard to them; or they can be printed with all additions in italics and parts struck out enclosed in brackets, in which case a note to that effect should precede the report or resolution. Any such record or transcript of the proceedings prepared for publication, however, does not take the place of the minutes, and it is the minutes which comprise the official record of the assembly's proceedings. "

You're on your own in figuring out whether what you described constitutes "publishing the minutes".

Perhaps if you can provide more information or tell us why you are asking the question we can help you more.  For example, do your bylaws require that the minutes be published and you wonder if posting on the website constitutes "publishing"?  If that is your question, I'm still afraid that you are on your own as that is a matter of interpreting your own bylaws or rules... something that only your organization can do for itself.

Edited March 27, 2018 at 04:25 PM by Richard Brown
Page number correction

[Josh Martin]

40 minutes ago, Guest Bill1201 said:

Our Homeowners Association BOD holds periodic meetings to manage the affairs of the Association which are not open to the Membership. The minutes of these meetings are approved by the BOD and then posted on the Association website for members to read.

My question is: Does posting these minutes to the website constitute Publishing the minutes?

In my opinion, posting minutes on a website for the members of the society to read would not constitute “publishing” the minutes, but even if it did, it wouldn’t matter. The issue is not so much the medium as the fact that “to publish” means to make a document available to the public - that is, beyond just the membership of your society.

We used to get this question a lot because of the reference in RONR to “published minutes,” which included a great deal more information than the minutes ordinarily would. The 11th edition makes clear that an assembly may, if it wishes, publish a full record of its proceedings, but even if an assembly chooses to do, that is not the same thing as the minutes.

Edited March 27, 2018 at 04:27 PM by Josh Martin