Open Meetings Law

By law, citizens have the right to attend meetings of public bodies, listen to the debates, and watch the decision-making process in action. These meetings are considered “open meetings.” Article seven of the New York State Public Officers Law is entitled, Open Meetings Law. This law lays out all of the requirements and exemptions for meetings held by public bodies. The Open Meetings Law went into effect in 1977

Learning About Meetings

Most people participate in meetings almost every day, multiple times a day. The study of meetings is important, but also challenging, as it requires an understanding of social signals and complex interpersonal dynamics. Our aim this work is to use a data-driven approach to the science of meetings. We provide tentative evidence that: i) it is possible to automatically detect when during the meeting a key decision is taking place, from analyzing only the local dialogue acts, ii) there are common patterns in the way social dialogue acts are interspersed throughout a meeting, iii) at the time key decisions are made, the amount of time left in the meeting can be predicted from the amount of time that has passed, iv) it is often possible to predict whether a proposal during a meeting will be accepted or rejected based entirely on the language (the set of persuasive words) used by the speaker

Value of Sample Separation Information in a Sequential Probit Model: Another Look at SSA's Disability Determination Process

Disability, Method of Simulated Movements, Multivariate Probit, Social Security.

Virtual Shareholder Meetings

Electronic communication impacts how widely-held corporations conduct shareholder meetings. For example, technology has facilitated such options as electronic proxy voting, remote electronic voting, and virtual meetings. This iBrief examines the idea of virtual meetings and argues that they should not entirely replace physical meetings unless an electronic solution can be devised which replicates the face-to-face accountability of management to retail shareholders

Open Meetings: Land Use Mediation and the Public\u27s Right to Know

Great uncertainty surrounds the New York Open Meetings Law (OML), a law that permits the public to attend meetings of public bodies. Obviously, the OML becomes especially crucial in the area of land use where public governmental meetings are the norm, and conflicts usually involve several interested parties. This article delves into OML issues such as, what constitutes a public meeting, and the importance of having meetings open to the public

Random matrices: The Universality phenomenon for Wigner ensembles

In this paper, we survey some recent progress on rigorously establishing the universality of various spectral statistics of Wigner Hermitian random matrix ensembles, focusing on the Four Moment Theorem and its refinements and applications, including the universality of the sine kernel and the Central limit theorem of several spectral parameters. We also take the opportunity here to issue some errata for some of our previous papers in this area.Comment: 58 page

Event Planner Sensitivity to the Needs of Individuals with Visual Disability at Meetings and Events

Special events, such as fairs, conventions, ballgames, and concerts are typically activities people attend to participate in the festivities and enjoy with friends and family members. For individuals with disabilities, however, these types of events can create more challenges than enjoyment. Despite a thorough review of the literature, no studies were found which evaluated the experiences of individuals who are blind and have visual impairments at events and meetings. The aim of this study was to determine the current level of accessibility at meetings perceived by consumers who are blind and visually impaired. Respondents to the survey indicated many obstacles to accessing meetings including: discrimination, a paucity of accessible features, and accessibility features that are not truly accessible for consumers who are blind and visually impaired. Recommendations are provided for increasing meeting and event accessibility for consumers who are blind and visually impaired